Letter · 12 Jan 1916 · Manchester, Great Britain and Ireland
Here I lost all my mates.
On his service record, Frederick's surname was incorrectly recorded as Trenue. A later note states his surname was in fact Zeunert. It is also noted he was born in South Australia. In Adelaide there was a family by this surname. MC: “13/747 Sergeant Frederick Charles Trenue first served with the Auckland Mounted Rifles, 1NZEF, at Gallipoli, where he was slightly wounded several times and later evacuated suffering from dysentery followed by enteric fever. After recovering he appears to have been briefly posted to the NZ Medical Corps before his final posting with the Auckland Infantry Regiment. Trenue served a total of 5 years and 165 days before being finally discharged in April 1920, on account of illness contracted whilst on active service. On his return to New Zealand he was employed as a carpenter at the Hicks Bay freezing works. He was drowned whilst fishing off rocks near Matakaoa Point, Hicks Bay, on Sunday, 31 October 1920. It was unclear if his body was ever recovered. [Source: 'Poverty Bay Herald', Vol. XLVII, No. 15,360, 3 November 1920, Page 3] Frederick Trenue, who was also known as Johann Friedrich Carl Zeunert (Trenue spelt backwards, minus the letter 'z'), was of German descent and was born on 11 January 1881, at Greenock, South Australia, though he claimed on his NZ Expeditionary Force attestation papers to have been born on 11 January 1882, at Christchurch, New Zealand. His parents were Johann Gottlieb Zeunert and Anna Lydia Otto.”
Extracts from this letter
"It used to turn me sick at times to see the dreadful pieces of human bodies lying about, with a head rolling without a body legs and arms all over the place, often I have taken cover behind our own dead, as Mr Turk was having a shot at you, the bullet would plunk in the body in front of you, oh Gill this was Hell on Earth, for if Hell can be worse, but I really think it can't be worse..."
"it was here I lost all my mates for ten of us in the same tent all through our time in Eg [Egypt], eight are killed and the other alive besides myself had his arm blown off. ... I could fill a book but I get sad to think of my poor comrades....."
