Dysentery, due to poor quality water and little of it, was becoming the new killer on the Gallipoli peninsular, claiming an increasing number of lives of men serving there.

One of the latest victims was Pte Charles Whelpton Few, 1889, 1/1st Eastern Mounted Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, who died on a hospital ship on October 19th, 1915, after contracting dysentery. He was the son of the Great Northern Railway stationmaster at Luton and was just 21 years old.

Many relatives had received letters from men suffering from dysentery who were being treated in hospitals in Egypt and back home in England. And many men in Gallipoli had written home to say that water there was more precious than gold.