12 May 1915 - telegram sent home to Australia advising A.G. Adams wounded

12 May 1915 - the Department of  Defence sent a telegram to Mrs A.E. Sherwood to inform her that her son, A.G. Adams, had been wounded.

A.E. Sherwood was Athol's mother and next of kin. She would not have heard news from Athol for some time and this sort of telegram must have been dreaded by Adah and the family back home in Melbourne.

The first of the long, worrying casualty lists had been published in the Melbourne newspaper 'The Argus' on 8 May. This list referred to 139 killed, 353 wounded and 2 missing. Of course this list referred to the casualties arising from the initial days at Anzac Cove. By 8 May the 2nd Brigade was again in action at Krithia.

It is interesting to note how mixed up all the correspondence becomes. Athol was injured on both 25 April and 8 May. This telegram seems to be the only timely communication and too brief to really let anyone know the actual state of the injuries and where he was and what was happening. Letters home took a very long time to arrive and as we can see from Athol's letters they only told a fraction of the real story and quite a lot about the weather.

National Archives of Australia

I realise this is rather feint. If you wish to see a better screen version please check the digitised copy of the service records held at the National Archives of Australia.
Start at: http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/NameSearch/Interface/NameSearchForm.aspx
and use the surname 'Adams' and service number '619'.
Select 'digital copy'.
This will download the entire service record.
Go to page 120.