ANZAC Club opened
To: No. 20907, Gunner F.T. Baker [ Frederick Thomas Baker ], 34th Battery, 9th Field Artillery Brigade, 3rd Australian Division.
Box 47,
Brisbane.
19th July 1916.
“My dear Fred,
“I am very glad to have a letter from you, and to know you are having a good time at sea.
“I wonder where you are now, and what is your destination.
“I am sorry to have missed you when you were in Brisbane for your final leave, and do not quite know whether you are on the same ship as Mr. Edwards [ The Reverend Cecil Howard Edwards ], but I am very pleased to hear you and he are good firm friends now.
“Am glad you have told me of the services on board, and I am quite sure you attend and also appreciate them.
“You will be interested to know we have opened an ANZAC Club for returned soldiers and perhaps some day you will be visiting it. It is in St Luke’s building.
“We have also built a chapel at the Military Headquarters Hospital as a memorial to Earl Kitchener [ Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener ].
“We used it for the first time last Sunday, and there were about 40 patients.
“David [ David James Garland ] left for the Front a few days ago. He is attached to the Wireless Squadron and will be leaving Sydney probably very soon.
“He passed his examination as Corporal.
“I hope everything will go well with you, and we wish to see you back here safe and sound.
“Yours sincerely,
[signed] D. Garland [ David John Garland ]
Director, Soldiers’ C.E. Help Society.”
– from The State Library of Queensland collection,
Canon David John Garland Papers, Item No. OM71-51-26.
Gunner Baker was a 19-year-old carpenter when he enlisted in the First AIF at Brisbane on 6 November 1915. On 10 November 1917 his left leg was amputated after he was wounded action in France.
PICTURED ABOVE: The uniforms of the Australian Field Artillery Brigades. This image appeared in the “The Queenslander Pictorial” (supplement to “The Queenslander”) of 12 September 1914 (page 26).
