29/05/2026
An extract from the diary of Alec Riley in 1915. Riley was a signaller in the 42nd Division.
'On the morning of Saturday, May 29, a man who was wounded, bloody and staggering, brought in a message from Captain Rylands, who was wounded.
Rylands and his party had been told to creep out in front of the firing-line. They did so, and dug themselves in, and had lost many of the party in doing it. Several of the 7th had been killed.
Riddick, who was in charge of the RE field company men at this part of the line, was annoyed about the Rylands affair, and said so, plainly, when he had a few words with the Manchester Brigade about it. How he was concerned was not clear to me.
We dealt with a message which said that four Turkish boats had been sunk in the Sea of Marmara; and later on another message addressed to OC 5, 6, 7, and 8 battalions.
Following message begins. AAA. I congratulate you and your gallant brigade on their achievement under difficult circumstances and am confident that it is only a prelude to further good works. AAA. Major-General Douglas. AAA. Ends. AAA. GOC 127th Brigade.
This bilge was received with thumbs to noses. We heard that Hepburn and Standring of the 8th had been killed, and that Rylands and his party were isolated for the time being.
In the afternoon, Captain Savatard of the 7th was shot in the head. Sniping went on all day.
As far as we were concerned the day was quiet. We gave our telephone new batteries, had a look at our line, had a generous issue of ci******es, had our latrine-office enlarged and improved by the battalion pioneers, and I spent an hour with Poole at the 5th Manchesters headquarters.
The 7th headquarters cooks lent us their fire at tea-time in return for a present of wood we gave them. Captain Cunliffe, LFs, attached to the 7th, didn’t like us at first, but he thawed in due course.
We all knew that something was going to happen in the near future, and we spent a lot of time in guessing about the form it was likely to take; we snatched at any rumours, however feeble, likely or unlikely, in those days.
The trench was not deep, in this part of the line, and as we walked along it, we had to keep our heads bent. Showers of earth dropped on us when bullets caught the parapet.
We were comfortable in our new dug-out. For shelter from the sun we fastened an old ground-sheet overhead, by means of a piece of wire, two bayonets and an old rifle. Firewood was scarce, water was not easy to get hold of at times; we were very dirty, living and looking like navvies. And no one seemed merry and bright, nowadays.
Haworth had the afternoon off. He spent it in making an excursion to our old headquarters, where he stayed for tea.
He returned at 6 p.m., and then I was able to go out with Stanton. We were glad to have a stretch, away from the cramped and stuffy trench. We knew a place where we could lie down in the open, taking our ease, but we left it when a shrapnel had dumped a load of balls near us, and returned to an outlook of earth and clay, and to hear from Franklin that Rylands was dead.
My duty at night was from 9 p.m. to midnight, and I wrote down such messages as came by the light of a decrepit candle, shaped like a wriggling centipede. When Stringer was on duty I had to get up to help him, as he was not sufficiently used to the work.'
[Source: Riley, Alec. Gallipoli Diary 1915. Little Gully Publishing]
