Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of David and M. GALLAHER; husband of Eva GALLAHER, 169 Lord Street, Perth, Western Australia

A BOULDER CORPORAL

Writing from Kasr-el-Aing Hospital at Cairo, Corporal D. W. Gallagher, who prior to leaving with the first Australian Contingent, resided at 35 Evans-street, Boulder, with his wife, and who was wounded in the operations at the Dardanelles, speaks interestingly of the landing.
He says: —
I am getting along alright now and hope to be back in the firing line again in a couple of weeks' time. I suppose you have read about our little bit of a skirmish at the Dardanelles. We went from Cairo to Alexandria by train, then embarked and steamed for Lamboo Island. We remained there for seven weeks to mobilise, and there were over two hundred boats there waiting for the fray, which I can tell you came soon enough. Our brigade had the honour of being the advance party — that is, to go ashore first, which we did; and paid pretty dearly for it. However, somebody had to do it. Well, we  left Lamboo Island on April 24, and just before daybreak we put off for the shore in small boats towed by pinnaces, and just before we reached the shore they opened fire on us from the top of the  cliffs and hills with, machine guns, and rifles, so it was a case of jump out and go for your life like a madman. When we left the boats we were up to our necks in water, and some of the poor lads got out of their depth and were drowned without even seeing a Turk or getting in a shot.  Our equipment weighed one hundred pounds, so the lads would not have much chance of swimming with that load on. Well, to make a long story short, what was left of our brave fellows scrambled on to the shore under a regular hail of bullets. Fixing bayonets, we all set off up the steep cliffs, after Johnnie the Turk, and the most surprising thing of all was we never fired a shot until we reached the crest of the first cliff. After that we chased them, for three miles. We were only six hundred strong at the start, and it was a good job for us that they did not know, or guess, our strength, or they would have 'done for’ the lot of us. I might tell you that Lord Kitchener gave the Australians seven days to get to a certain hill about two miles from the shore, and we got there in two hours. That was not too bad, anyhow. It was sad, though, for we have lost most of our officers, and our comuany is pretty well cut up. We fought from three o'clock on Sunday morning till midnight on the following Wednesday, before we were relieved, and we had nothing to eat and very little to drink. We were very hard pushed, as there were about ten to one. Then it was made all the worse, as they brought up their batteries and dimply gave us plain Hell with shrapnel. Our men-o'-war did splendid work, and when the shells burst from the good old navy, they made no mistake, mind you. Many sent fragments of Turkish soldiers two hundred feet into the air, and it was awful to see. I suppose I had better tell you how I came to get into hospital. Well, they called for one hundred volunteers to go and take, if possible, a fort, named Kapi-Tipi. Until then we had had ten days and nights of continuous fighting, nine of them being accompanied with very little sleep. We journeyed round in torpedo boats at daybreak, and then got into small boats and pulled in to the shore. As soon as our boats grazed the beach, they opened fire on us with machine guns at a distance of 100 yards. Barbed wire was everywhere, and we only moved with great difficulty. “I can tell you it was terrible, and the plight we were in was awful. Two sailors from the ships and two of our other fellows in my boat were shot dead before we could get out. I was just in the act of doing so when a piece of shrapnel 'smacked' me on the  forehead and knocked me over. Poor old Charlie (my mate) got shot through the back and out through his chest. He was placed on a hospital ship, and came away two days before us, so I can not find out where he is, or whether the poor chap is alive. You will be able to form some judgment of the fighting when you know that we had forty casualties out of one hundred on that little bit of beach, and then never took the fort. We are told that in the late Balkan war over five thousand Greeks lost their lives in trying to take the same fort. That being the case, I don't know what they thought we were. Tell all the boys that what is left of our company is still going strong.''