Victoria’s 22nd Battalion landed at Anzac Cove in September 1915, after months aboard a troopship and in Egypt. Their chaplain was Reverend TP Bennett, known to the men as ‘Padre’. Rev Bennett lived in a dugout in Shrapnel Gully, where he spent his days burying the dead, writing to their loved ones, and conducting services. Every day he went into the trenches, his ‘parish’, to visit the battalion. He was, wrote Patsy Adam-Smith in The Anzacs, ‘the paragon among men’. This is a selection of Rev Bennett’s collection of hand-coloured and black-and-white glass slides. His son donated the collection to the State Library of Victoria in 1983.
Above: The ground at Gallipoli is steep and stony, so stretcher-bearers carried the dead and wounded out of the trenches. Rev Bennett was stationed nearby to console the wounded, record each death and perform the burial services.
