Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Rupert Henry Treganowan kept copies of all his letters home from the Palestine campaign and these are now held at the Soldiers Memorial Institute and Military Museum in Bendigo Vic (photo attached).

The following letter dated 30 April 1918 was published in the Bendigo Independent on 12 July 1918 and is of particular interest for the attitude displayed (by some at home) toward the AIF soldiers in different theatres of WW1. He wrote:

“Some of the boys have just received billies from patriotic societies in Australia. In some of them are little notes reading like this: ‘I hope the receiver of this billy is one of our boys in France, and not a cold-footed Light Horseman in Palestine.’ I might tell you the lads are very sore about it. If the people at home only knew the hardships and suffering we go through they would change their tune. Over these hot plains and goat tracks for days at a time with very little water and sometimes none at all, and a dry biscuit in the way of food, and plenty of fighting in between and no leave whatever”.

“The people at home see very little in the papers about this front and are much mistaken about it. There are some miserable people in Australia who are not worth risking our lives for. The people at home have no right to put notes like that in the boys' parcels. It is not all beer and skittles fighting and sweating in Palestine against Turks, Bulgarians, Germans and natives of the soil. Many a time it has been like hell let loose and you would only worry if I told you what war is like, and the dreadful sights we see almost every day. On one occasion we had no sleep for eight days and nights, particularly at the big battles of Beersheba and Gaza: in those places the ground was covered with dead, both sides loosing (sic) heavily.”

Rupert Henry Treganowan was born on 14 January 1896 at Clifton Hill, Victoria. As a 21-year-old he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) at Bendigo on 12 January 1917, where he was given the service number 18321 and the rank of sapper. A telegraphist before the war, Treganowan was earmarked for a signals unit, and on 9 May 1917 he left Sydney aboard the troopship HMAT Port Sydney.

Arriving in Egypt the next month, Treganowan was attached to a signal company for training. In September he joined the 1st Australian Airline Section of the Desert Mounted Corps whose role it was to run telegraph and telephone wires.

Throughout 1917 and 1918 he detailed in letters home the conditions he and the Australian Light Horse faced, as well as the progress of the campaign in Palestine. In July 1918, Treganowan joined the 4th Signal Troop of the 2nd Signal Squadron and in the closing months of the war wrote about several of the major battles, including the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918. He was with the Australians when they entered Damascus at the conclusion of the war.

With the surrender of the Ottoman Empire in October, the Australians were sent back to Egypt where they played a pivotal role in restoring order during the uprising of March and April 1918, something which Treganowan recorded in his letters.

He left Egypt to return to Australia in July 1919.

Several years after returning to Australia, and on 25 August 1921, Treganowan married Alice Winidred Longmore. He passed away on 23 April 1952 at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and was buried three days later at Melbourne General Cemetery.

His daughter Nancy compiled a transcript of his wartime letters in 1987.

Source: AWM