Ensay Station over Little River

Well, you see, I am still in the land of the living and fit and well. We are once more down in the rest camp after a fortnight in the firing line. We had a great scrap the other night. The Turks, about 3,000 strong, attacked our trenches but got the father of a hiding and left over 200 dead and about the same number of wounded behind them, as well as 20 or so prisoners. It was great sport while it lasted. Our squadron was in the reserve camp at the time and war rushed in at about 12 o'clock. We finished the off at about daylight. It was fine sport and plenty of excitement, as they came right up to our trenches and got shot down like rabbits for their trouble.

We have very little news of the outside world and hardly know how things are going outside of our own corner, so papers of any sort are most welcome, as reading passes away many a long and dreary hour here when things are quiet. I cannot say how long the Turks are going to hang out. All I can say is that they are going to get a devil of a hiding. But at the same time they are very brave fighters and have any amount of pluck. They are also a fine big race of men, and are well equipped in rifles and ammunition. Their uniform is certainly getting worn out and very shabby, also a lot of them are without boots. I hope they soon get fed up and chuck it in.

There is really very little news to write about here, as we are most of the time in the trenches and see nothing but the trench walls and millions of flies, and hear only the screeching shells and the everlasting crack of rifles and whizz of bullets. The things I dislike most are the hand grenades. At night time the Turks sneak up to the trenches and throw these beastly things in. Of course we play the same game on them, and I fancy our bombs are much severer than theirs.

There is one thing about the army. We soldiers are not paid to think for ourselves, so there is no worry attached to the life, as others have to do all the thinking and bear all responsibility. So we can all sleep soundly when we get the chance. But sleep seems to be the one thing we are always short of — generally one takes a nap whenever opportunity occurs. The climate here is good, very like Ensay, but if anything warmer, and the nights are never cold, like Egypt. The flies are something awful. They are the curse of this part, and simply swarm on our food and are ever pestering one. I suppose the fact of so many dead bodies about makes them worse.

While we are in the rest camp we go for a swim every day in the sea, and it is a treat. The sea here is always calm ; there are no breakers at all. In fact I have never seen it as rough as the Gippsland lakes on a windy day. It really would be an ideal place for yachting or motor boating. The islands around look very pretty, so hilly and green. There should be excellent fishing here, but there are very few shore birds of any kind. I occasionally hear a qurlew at night, but with the exception of pigeons and vultures (which are numerous) the only other birds I have seen are aeroplanes, which often hover round. It is great sport to watch the Turks shelling them. They waste no end of ammunition in the form of shrapnel, with no visible results; but the men in them have some nerve, as the shrapnel bursts all round them. Still they keep at it. I must say I object strongly to shrapnel or shell fire. Nobody seems to take any notice of bullet or rifle fire, but shell fire, requires some nerve to stand up to and not duck your head. I have never seen the man who did not duck when it came screaming overhead. We get a good variety of shell fire here at times, from Jack Johnsons to 15lb. shrapnel. I dislike them one and all ; but, Lord, they have to take back more than they give. When the war boats open on them with Lyddite shells they do tear things up a treat.

Writing paper and envelopes are unobtainable here and are in great demand. Tobacco is also very hard to get. The amount issued lasts me only about half a week, and sometimes we only get cigarettes. I had the misfortune to break my pipe the other day, and there is no chance of getting another until goodness knows when. Otherwise, I am well and happy.

Source:TROVE.NLA.GOV.AU

END OF FIRST LETTER.
Curious what was a"Lyditte shell" I have found a poem The Song of Lyditte Shell.

Away! Away! On the wing of light
I scream through the riven air
with ghastly shriek these words I speak
Destruction and Despair!

The whole poem written by Arnold Hare can be find here

Ensay Recruits 1915.Museum of Victoria

Melbourne. Recruitment papers. Australian War Memorial

THE SECOND LETTER

Many thanks for the hamper which I received in good order from the Mutual Store yesterday. It was very good of you to think of me, and I may add, myself and the other members of my section enjoyed the luxuries very much for tea last night. They were a contrast to army rations, as our tea is always bread and jam, meat being only served for breakfast and dinner.

Glad to hear that you have been having such splendid rains in Gippsland, and suppose you are having a record season after it. Hope you had a good percentage of lambs at your marking and also a good clip. From what I can gather sheep are pretty good property in Victoria at present, and bringing record prices; which is good for those who are fortunate enough to have a few for sale; but I suppose there is a big scarcity of all stock in Australia at present.

I never had the luck to strike Jack, your boy, or Alex Robb in Egypt, though I met many of the others from Omeo and Bairnsdale district. I suppose Jack and his lot went straight across to England and from there on to France. Anyhow, I hope he is getting along all right and still unhurt. I see Albert Burden's name among the missing. I am very sorry for his family, but perhaps he may be a prisoner of war. I hope so, anyhow. I saw him and Jack Holston in Heliopolis just before I came away to the desert again, I also saw the two Frazer boys, Tom and George, Freddy White from Cassilis, and Jack Jenkins of Bruthen, at Serapium, just before they sailed for France. They all looked well and in fine health, I missed seeing Neville McKellar and Norman Nichols at the same place.

Well, I have seen a fair bit of Egypt since I came over here first, just on two years ago, and except for four months on Gallipoli have been in Egypt and up on the borders of Tripoli ever since - so claim to know it like a book now.

This time last year I joined the Composite Light Horse. After coming out of the hospital I was placed in B class, which is unfit for the tren ches and supposed to do only light duties in Egypt. However, I was pretty good cobbers with Lieutenant Hopkins of the 10th L H., who used to be schoolmaster at Bindi, and of course well known to you and your boys. He joined the Composite L.H, (who were a mixture made up in a hurry in Egypt of reinforcements and details of every Light Horse regiment from the 1st to the 13th) and sneaked me into his troop.

We were called away at once to the relief of a town called Mersa Maturab, about 300 odd miles from Cairo, and on towards the borders of Tripoli. We embarked on the train at a station near Heliopolis and travelled on to Alexandria, and there joined a Yeomanry (English) brigade at a camp known as Mix-camp. Here we put in two weeks training, and then at midnight one night we boarded the train for a place called El Daubs, which was the rail head or end of the railway to the west of Egypt.

From here we commenced our long trek up to Mersa Maturab, where the enemy, the Senussi Arabs, were giving trouble. I think we travelled 100 miles by forced marches, but had no fighting on the way up. However, we soon saw plenty of scrapping, and after about three months succeeded in driving the Arabs well over the border. This was known as the Western Frontier campaign, and it was a great experience, our part being all mounted work. The Arabs were a wild-looking lot, but fall of pluck and fight, and were well led by Turkish officers. Many of them used old flint lock rifles and pistols, but for the most part they had up to date German machine guns and Mauser or Martini or solder rifles, and knew how to use them.

We had a large body of Indian, New Zealand and Scottish infantry always backing us up, so the pressure was too much for them in the end. Western Egypt is of course looked upon as a desert; but if there was a regular rainfall then it would make all the difference, as I saw thousands of areas of beautiful limestone hills and plains there, that struck me at once as ideal sheep country. Much of this country struck me as being very like Buchan and Bindi, but of course bare of all feed except two kinds of salt bush which horses were very fond of.

The natives up here all own small flocks of sheep and goats, as well as a few cattle ; and of course Arab ponies and camels by the dozen. The sheep are queer looking beasts, all having brown faces and long tails—-exceptionally long tails, which seem to carry more wool on them than the rest of the body. The wool is rather like very bad border leicester wool, quite dry arid devoid of yolk.

We captured thousands of these sheep and goats, and in fact nearly lived on them. While we were up there the first big fall of rain, of any importance for seventeen years fell, and, by God ! it did rain. Starting on Christmas Day (while we were in the midst of a very hot battle) it continued on for nine days and flooded the whole country-side, and of course hampered our operations, as the transport waggons and limbers with ammunition used to get bogged, and we were at times left for 24 hours without horse feed or tucker. But of course there was water everywhere. The winter climate up there was very fine, in fact, all Egypt has a great, winter climate. The days are hot like October days in Gippsland, but the nights and mornings are bitterly cold on the desert.

Bathing on a desert. Australian War Memorial

I was unfortunate enough to develop malarial fever on my way back from Western Egypt, and had to go into hospital in Heliopolis for ten days until I shook it off. Then I joined my own regiment again and three days afterwards we left for Serapium on the Canal. We put in about five months out on the desert about fifteen miles from Serapium, doing patrol and outpost duty, and always on the ready for an attack ; but during that five months we only had two stunts (scraps). In the first) of these stunts 140 of us were picked out of the regiment of 500 men, and sent away to capture a Turkish outpost and camp called Jiff Jaffa. It was about 80 miles across the desert, but Jiff Jaffa itself was a fine bit of lime stone country, with very rough lime stone hills all around it. Here we surprised and captured the Turkish camp, after killing seven and wounding six of them. The remaining 37 threw in the towel, and we only lost one man killed and two horses. The second stunt was rounding up Bedouin Arabs in the limestone hills of Waddi Muckshi. There was no blood spilt that time.

In August we received marching orders and left in a hurry for Roumani; and then the fun really began, as the Turkish army had launched its great attack on the Suez Canal and things were only middling. We came in on the extreme right, with the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and the 1st and 2nd LH. brigades on our left, and behind us was the Inverness battery of horse artillery. This was the Anzac mounted division. My regiment was the first of the 3rd brigade to get into it, but the N.Z. and 1st and 2nd LH. brigades had been in it all night before we came on the scene. I can claim to say I saw the first shot fired on our wing, and she soon developed into a very bad corner; but that first day we captured some 2000 odd prisoners and five or six machine guns with German and Austrian gunners. However, we lost five or six of our best men killed, as well as a few horses.

After that day it was a running fight for six days and nights. The enemy were retiring, but fighting every inch of the way, and of course, we were losing men and horses all the time; but giving them particular hell with our artillery. They had of course plenty of artillery also, but their shooting was not good, though they did once or twice get amongst our horses with shrapnel and did considerable damage. I think the 8 h regiment lost more men than we did and considerably more horses, as they got into a very nasty scrap on August 7, the anniversary of Walker's Ridge and Lone Pine, which was on August 7, 1915 on Gallipoli, when the 8th and 10th L.H, were so badly knocked about. Jack Winnett received the wounds that killed him that day.

The worst part of the fighting here was the constant going, and the want of rest and sleep and proper meals was telling its tale on both men and horses, as we were at it day and night; also the want of water, as the weather was terribly hot and the country nothing but white sand. The unfortunate wounded men used to suffer terribly from thirst if they were lying out long. At the end of the scrapping we had the pleasure of holding the front line for nearly three months, and it was pretty nervy work—mostly night patrols and outposts—and conditions were rough, as we had no blankets or tents and all our water and rations were packed out by camels.

However, we were running a railway out at the rate of a mile a day with an army of native labor, and sinking wells everywhere. Now things are quite civilised to what they were, as we have the railway right out here and are pushing it still further along.

This is a queer country—all sand and sand dunes (hills)—and every few miles there are gullies full of date palms. These date palm gullies are known as hoads or hods, and the palms and fig trees have been planted centuries ago by the Bedouin Arabs who care for them, and in peace times the fruit is all bought up by the agents of Turkish syndicates and packed by camels to the nearest port or railway and shipped to Constantinople, where they are treated and preserved and placed on the world's market.

However, this year they are all going to waste and falling off the trees in tons, as the Bedouins chose to throw in their lot with the Turks and of course we have driven out of this part and made prisoners of any that fell in our way. While the dates were ripe we nearly lived on them and water melons, which grow wild in patches here and there over the desert.

Infantry. Frank Hurley. Australian War Memorial

Australian troops attacking Ottoman trench. AWM

In this country water can be got almost in any gully at a depth of from three to five feet, but it is extremely brackish and bitter. Horses are fond of it when they get used to it, but it will make human beings sick until they get used to it. However, the Arabs prefer it to sweet water, being always in the habit of using it. Our drinking water is all brought out from the sweet water canal. The desert here is about the most dreary part of Egypt, being nothing but a sea of sand with absolutely no grass and very little herbage. There are one or two fodder plants of the salt bush variety, but for the most part the dunes and plains are covered with a scrub not unlike our wild cherry, and African boxthorn is the other most common scrub. The natives here all have their flocks of sheep and goats but no cattle or horses. All their travelling is done on camels, which are also their beasts of burden.

Just now we are enjoying the most pleasant period of the year, except for the cold nights. But in the summer the sand storms are hell, and the heat and flies beyond description ; also sand flies and mosquitoes are troublesome near water. The life on the whole is very healthy and there is practically no sickness here, as the air is beautifully clear and pure on the desert —very different to the underground life of the trenches on Gallipoli, where sickness was our worst foe.

There are very few Omeo boys in this regiment, as the other two squadrons are both South Australians; but the troop I am in is all Gippslanders from Omeo district. We have Billy Speers (a grandson of old Dick Rawson), Jack Parkes (Omeo Plains), Charlie Ainsworth (Tongio) and Tony Brown (Casillis). There are a few number of Bairnsdale and lower Gippsland boys here, and they are all good men.

I have had over two years of soldiering now and feel pretty fed up of it all, and especially of the desert life. However, I have got through so far without a wound, though I have not missed a single stunt or scrap that my lot have taken part in. I am afraid by the time you get to the end of this letter you will be pretty sick of it, as I have been pretty long winded; but thought perhaps you would be interested in this part of the world, so kept on scribbling away.

I could write volumes about Egypt. There is so much to write about here, especially in the farming and agricultural districts about the Nile and Cairo—which is the finest land I think I have ever seen, and well irrigated—but I don't think there is a single fence in Egypt. The Egyptian natives and Arabs have no time for.

Source: TROVE.NLA.GOV.AU

More about Strzelecki and the Ensay Station. Watch the video

Did Strzelecki sleep here? Mystery of the Ensay Station narrated by Ernestyna Skurjat-Kozek. Dur 6:39

The Ensay Station today. Photo Puls Polonii