We did not mind the rum so much, for the Army Service Corps had quite enough on hand for our ration when the issue was due. But every Australian on Gallipoli bitterly resented the loss of the mails. It made us really angry. Some of our chaps reckoned that the loss of the mails and rum was the prime cause of the big battle which ensued during the early days of August. So they have called it the Battle of Mail Rum. Historians, however, will probably call this sanguinary struggle the Battle of Suvla Bay. Good folk at home, and even of the out-back country, receive mails pretty regularly. We get ours once a fortnight, or once a month, or at even longer intervals. I do not join in the general chorus of condemnation of our postal service, for since the time I enlisted nearly twelve months ago all my letters and parcels have come duly to hand, while, so far as I know, none of my letters to Australia have gone astray. When we came to Gallipoli we naturally expected some break in the continuity of the service--and we got it. One reason is that, while the New Zealanders provided an up-to-date, well-equipped postal service, the Australians had only a skeleton postal corps--shockingly undermanned. Hence the congestion at Alexandria and Lemnos and the belated arrival of letters at Anzac. There is nothing that cheers the soldiers up so much as letters from home. You see their eyes light up with pleasure as the postal orderlies toil up the hill with the mail bags. The postal corporal is the most popular man in the army. But he always seems so slow with his sorting. Those of us not in the trenches crowd round him and pounce eagerly on our precious missives. I have seen a great, hulking, swearing, unshaven trooper grab his letter, sneak into his dug-out, and kiss reverently some love-letter from a sweetheart back in sunny New South Wales; or perhaps it was from his mother or sister away in the great West land. And I've seen anxious troopers, with yearning eyes, hang round till the last letter and postcard were sorted--then wander away silently, and gaze dry-eyed over the blue Mediterranean. Some of our fellows are married men, and some of these married men used jokingly to say that they had enlisted to get away from ... never mind; but I know that there was not one of them but spent half his time thinking of the old and the middle-aged and the young folks at home--not one of them but would have given the world to be able to take a peep at the wife who scanned the casualty lists so eagerly as they appeared in the papers, and the kiddies who strutted round proudly, saying, "Daddy's gone to the war."