Pte. Edward John Richards, 11th Battalion Australian Infantry, a former journalist, dismissed some of the reports of Turkish atrocities in a letter of 10th September 1915.
Pte. Edward John Richards, 11th Battalion Australian Infantry, a former journalist, dismissed some of the reports of Turkish atrocities in a letter of 10th September 1915. “If my memory serves me right, in a previous letter I referred to the many wild and imaginative statements made in many of the letters written by some of our highly-strung and excitable comrades. A good deal of the mis-statements have been so ludicrously impossible, and contradictory that amongst the men in the trenches the reading of them has been productive of much laughter and caustic comment. But then, again, there have been many deliberate exaggerations, and falsehoods, solely for the purpose of boosting some individual. To those who have had an opportunity of seeing the exact truth for themselves, these tawdry and meretricious statements [are] particularly nauseating, and raises one's ire. For instance, we read of Turkish atrocities and mutilation of the wounded and dead. Although I have questioned m...