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Soldiers usually win the battles and generals get the credit for them. -- Napoleon Bonaparte |
![]() I wish you could see the heights and the rough cliffs the boys of our first brigade forced. Even to one who does not understand the difficulties you have to face to gain a hill the enemy holds, it seems an impossible feat. They are not hills. They are more like cliffs. Gaba Tepe will be the clasp that will be most cherished when this is over. I can tell you we were glad to get here to give the old hands their well-earned spell. We all wish for a speedy ending of this, as it is useless to say otherwise. We are very well off, considering we are on an enemy's country, but stubborn trench fighting does not suit our boys. They would sooner be always taking Gaba Tepes and pushing on…
We are right up in the firing line near Lonesome Pine. The remains of the barbed wire is still to be seen there. The beach is looking more civilised every day. There are a number of piers always busy - in fact the whole beach is as busy as the Victoria Market. We got more shells today, but it is marvelous the little damage that they do. Our chaps have been blown off the parapets and not injured, while the sandbags protecting them have been torn to pieces and showers of dirt and dust come all over us. I am in charge of a firing line just at present. We are always either in the firing line or supports. I often pass men who have Footscray written on their caps, and I have no idea who most of them are. Every man has the name of his home town written on his cap in indelible, and all towns of Australia are represented… I have got out of the way of writing a letter. Perhaps it is just as well, for if I write a glowing tale you might put it in the papers, which would be awful. Note: A letter by Corporal Alf. Birkhill, who is now at Anzac, pays warm tribute after seeing the heroic Australians who scaled the heights at Gaba Tepo.
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This Day in History
1758:
British forces capture Frances Fortress of Louisbourg after a seven-week siege.
1759: The French relinquish Fort Ticonderoga in New York to the British under General Jeffrey Amherst. 1790: An attempt at a counter-revolution in France is put down by the National Guard at Lyons. 1794: The French defeat an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus, France. 1848: The French army suppresses the Paris uprising. 1861: George McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac after the disaster at Bull Run five days prior. 1863: Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and 360 of his men are captured at Salineville, Ohio, during a spectacular raid on the North. 1912: The first airborne radio communications from naval aircraft to ship is conducted. 1917: Repeated German attacks north of the Aisne and at Mont Haut are repulsed. 1941: President Franklin Roosevelt seizes all Japanese assets in the United States in retaliation for the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China. |
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