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Description: | 80 ms letters (199pp) written home to his parents during service as a Petty Officer Mechanic with No 4 and (from April 1915) No 10 Armoured Car Squadron RNAS, January 1915 - September 1916, in the United Kingdom (January – March 1915), during the voyage to the Mediterranean and active service at Gallipoli (March – September 1915), in Egypt (September 1915 – July 1916) and having returned to the UK (September 1916); describing his training in the UK and the boredom prior to the Squadron’s embarkation, conditions onboard the SS INKONKA during the voyage from Devonport to the Mediterranean including the rough sea conditions and poor state of the ship, the harsh fighting at Gallipoli including his delight at shooting Turks (who ‘went down like a pack of cards’), the black market in ‘comforts’, his involvement in the landings at Suvla Bay (August 1915), the wounds he received from shrapnel, the construction of his dugout, his impressions of Alexandria, Zeppelin raids back home, his pride at being awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, operations in the Egyptian desert, Christmas celebrations, sight-seeing in Egypt, the difficulties in driving armoured cars through the desert sand, the accuracy or otherwise of British press reports on the Gallipoli campaign, and his doubts about the usefulness of the newly-introduced tanks. Together with two photocopied photographs showing him in uniform; ts letter (1p, 30 June 1915) from the Admiralty informing Westmuckett’s family that he had been slightly wounded in the leg; a photocopied ms account (5pp), with ts transcription (2pp), in which he describes in detail his experiences at Gallipoli, referring in particular to the intense fighting in which he was involved on 4/5 June and their successful repelling of Turkish attacks on 19 June and 13 July; and a newspaper cutting (1p, undated) regarding his award of the DSM on 22 September 1915.
Cataloguer APR | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Westmuckett, George Stanley | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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