ANZAC Day 2026: Soldier’s pocket book survived a miraculous 36-day journey across the sea to find its way home

“I should like to say how proud the Mother Country is of the splendid response made by her sons across the seas — and with what pride we read of the magnificent gallantry and heroism displayed by the Australian troops in the Dardanelles.” Had it not been for a cascading series of small miracles, Englishman Richard McDougall’s 1915 letter to Australian soldier John Forrest Reading, with its heartfelt thanks for the Digger’s sacrifice, would never have been written. Had McDougall not gone for a stroll along the English south coast at the exact right location — the eastern tip of the Isle of Wight — and had not glanced at the waves at the precise right time, the men would never have connected. “I was walking along the beach at Bembridge, Isle of Wight, accompanied by my son, a boy of 11, and my nephew, a boy of 9 — when we saw a small brown object floating in the sea, and slowly being washed ashore,” the London saddler wrote. “On picking it up we found it was a pocket book — and later we were able to ascertain the owner.” By another small miracle, the battered and waterlogged book had enough identifying marks either in it or on it for McDougall to realise it had been issued by the Australian Imperial Force. “On May 31st I wrote to the War Office to find out your whereabouts,” he wrote in his letter Reading, who went by the name Jack. ”And this morning I received a communication from the Offices of the High Commissioner for Australia to whom the War Office had forwarded my letter — giving me your present address.” Lance Corporal Reading’s “present address” was the Great Western Hospital in Manchester. That the 23-year-old was still alive was another miracle. Reading had been part of the first wave of ANZACs to storm the beach at Gallipoli and soon after he was ashore, a Turkish bullet pierced his mess tin, hitting a sergeant behind him. It was the first of many scrapes with death. “When about 500 yards from the Turkish fortifications and trenches they let go at us with shrapnel, maxims and rifle fire,” Reading would later tell his mother. “We had no trenches and simply had to lie down flat without any cover and suffer their fire, which was terrible. It was not fighting, it was cold-blooded murder. God knows how a single fellow lived through it.” Live through it, Reading did, albeit with a bullet hole in his ankle. After crawling for three hours back to the beach, he was put on a barge and towed to the battleship London. He’d been at Gallipoli barely 24 hours. Reading was evacuated to Alexandria and then on to England, arriving on May 28. He received McDougall’s letter a couple of weeks later. “I presume you are wounded,” McDougall wrote. “I sincerely hope that the nature of you wounds are not serious and that you will soon be completely restored to health. “I have much pleasure in restoring your pocket book to you.” Reading was astonished to receive his lost book and after reading the accompanying letter, quickly wrote back to McDougall. “I am sure wonders will never cease, and you yourself will probably be of the same opinion when you hear the story I am about to tell,” Reading wrote. “The pocketbook, as found by yourself at Bembridge, was lost by myself at Gaba Tepe (Dardanelles) during landing operations on Sunday morning April 25. “The whole thing is a mystery. I have asked myself several times ‘how did that book arrive at Bembridge?’ Surely it could not have floated, although such a thing could have happened, between the dates of April 25 and May 30.” In the lead-up to ANZAC Day, Reading’s granddaughter was wondering the same thing about the incredible find on the Isle of Wight. Her grandfather died in 1929 and the family history is a bit patchy. “People just didn’t talk about these types of things back then,” the Duncraig woman told The West Australian. “I looked at a map and traced where the book would have had to have gone and I don’t see how it could have floated its way back.” More likely, she thinks, is that it was in Reading’s coat, which he threw off because it was weighing him down in the water after he jumped out of his boat on the morning of April 25, 1915, and started wading to shore under Turkish fire. “Perhaps the coat was picked up and put on one of the boats heading back to England,” Gail said. “The pocketbook could easily have fallen out and then been washed off the ship as it came near where it was found.” Any naval vessel docking in the English port of Southampton would have sailed close to Bembridge, which is barely 40km from the bustling southern harbour. “It doesn’t really matter how it got there, it’s still quite incredible that it did,” Gail said. From the way her grandfather finished his letter to McDougall back in 1915, he clearly agreed. “With your permission I shall call the whole thing a modern day miracle,” he wrote.