Private Claude Palmer 10th Battalion A.I.F.

Claude Ernest Hamill Palmer was a 19 year old apprentice electrician residing on The Terrace in Port Pirie when he volunteered for the A.I.F. on the 31st August 1914. Private Palmer, Service Number 889, embarked overseas on the 20th November 1914 and was attached to the 10th Infantry Battalion landing on Gallipoli, Turkey 25th April 1915.

In a letter to his parents dated May 1st 1915 Private Palmer writes: Here I am in Alexandria again after an absence of nine weeks. As you know our brigade left Egypt on March 1st and went to Lemar, a small island about 35 miles east of the Dardanelles, we were there for about eight or nine weeks just doing practically nothing. However, it was a relief after Cairo, although it was so quiet, no towns to go to or anything like that, and of course on leave except for a three-day bivouac, we slept on the boat every night.

At last they got things going and last Saturday afternoon we left Lemnos and sailed for the Gulf of Saros and the Dardanelles. We were taken off the ______ at 1.30 and put into a destroyer and made for our landing.

We arrived there at 4 a.m. and put off in the boats to land. We were in the second lot of boats, and just as the first lot were landing we were getting in our boats off the destroyer about 150 yards from the land. As the first boats grounded the Turks opened fire on us. Our chaps simply fixed bayonets and charged the hill where they were entrenched. They had a battery along the shore which, fired at our boats the whole time we were landing, and I tell you it was pretty warm work.

Well, we pushed them back about two miles and got a footing. The third brigade, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th battalions held them while the others landed. At about 10 a.m. they started a counter-attack, and they got a lot of us enfiladed with machine gun fire and shrapnel, and I tell you they gave us fits. Well, I was lying down, being shot at for about four hours, and at last I got it in my left first finger. I could not hold my rifle up so I bandaged it up and retired down to where the Red Cross were dressing.

Young Len Hoche was hit in the left side and I managed to half carry, half drag him down. Well, we got to the beach, with their snipers shooting at us the whole time, and, were put on the ______. I tried to get ashore when I knew they were going to Alexandria, but they would not let me go, and they put us on another boat here and we are going back tomorrow, I think."

A fortnight after writing this letter Private Palmer received a shrapnel wound to the right foot. He returned to Australia with Typhoid Fever on March 14th 1916.

• Trove Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article95319730