Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Awarded Military Cross
'Has done fine work especially after the action of April 19th, when he was of greatest service and helpfulness to a large number of wounded.'

AT THE FRONT.
THE REV. H. K. GORDON.
The Rev. Capt.-Chaplain H. K. Gordon,writing to Canon Carver from Gallipoli under date' December 3, '15, says: Here I am at last in the place where I ought to be, right in the firing-line amongst the boys; these splendid follows who are fighting for King and Empire, for the credit of our heritage in the Southern Seas, and in a righteous cause, which must eventually triumph. I am hero on this peninsula amidst the shot and shell, and wounded and the dying; not because I like it - I don't but because I feel that where our boy so are struggling so nobly, and enduring such hardships in this the last and greatest of the crusades, there a priest of the Church of England should be to minister and comfort and help. It is my earnest prayer that I may be spared to be used. We have returned to the habits of our far-distant forefathers, and are largely cave-dwellers, sleeping and mealing in holes in the ground to avoid the unpleasant attentions of Johnny Turk. It is wonderful how our boys have adapted themselves to their altered circumstances. I am now with the 1st Light Horse Brigade, 2nd Regt., and no one of the squadrons or my old regiment forms part of the 2nd, I feel quite at home. As I write, bullets and shells are screaming overhead, yet from a dug-out a little distance away the strains of 'My Little Grey Home in the West' (with alterations to suit existing conditions) come forth lustily from a party who have fore gathered there. Aren't our boys great? I am proud of being an Australian!" The Captain gives a thrilling account of what was nearly a shipwreck near Patmos Island,and a visit to Imbros. He landed under fire,and appeared to have spent a good deal of his time since in "dodging shrapnel." Speaking of the place where the Australians landed, he says: "The nearer we got to the place the more impossible it seemed that anyone could have landed there in the face of a determined enemy, and yet our boys accomplished in a most brilliant manner the apparently impossible. Brave and gallant lads, they have, for all time, writ large upon the scroll of fame, 'Australia."' The letter closes with remembrances to all the writer's Goulburn friends.

King's Corporal W. Coulter, formerly of Goulburn, writing to his mother from Kasr el Aini Hospital, Cairo, 5th November, says:You will see by this that my fighting propensities have been put a stop to for the time being. My regiment had a very rough timeabout 10 days ago. We were flooded out of our trenches and everything we had washed away, and then we were snowed in the next night and frozen-stiff. No one could describe the hardships, and on the third day I was sent into the field hospital with a temperature and exposure, and after two days there I was sent on the ship with frozen feet and fever. There was no room at Lemnos, and we went on to Alexandria, and after a little while there on to Cairo by train. I am a great deal better now, and only anticipate trouble from my feet, which are still swollen and lifeless. I read about this trench endomia that the men used to get in France in the winter, but I never thought I would experience the awful thing. But we are going 150 miles further up the Nile to a place called Luxor, in a few days, where it is warmer, and I suppose I will get all right again. Of course the Turks suffered just as badly as us, and ten times more, and they could not stay in their trenches, and gave themselves up hundreds and more. I was sorry that I got carted away, for our regiment was leaving the Peninsula the next night after the storm started. All our spare stores and rations that were in excess had been handed in before the storm, and after it we could not got any, for no mules could got along. So we had practically. nothing to eat the last two days. But you will say that is warfare. Well, I would sooner face the longest hill to be taken than another night of that, and everybody will say the same. I have not been able to write before to reach you in time for Christmas, for my fingers and eyes were the only things I had functional about me for seven days. We are very well treated since being here in Egypt, and do not want for anything. So I know you will be more easy about me now.

Goulburn Evening Penny Post Saturday 12 February 1916 page 2