At the start of the Gallipoli campaign it was never imagined that so many men would require medical treatment and transport to hospital.  As soon as the invasion started in April 1915 the medical staff and facilities were overwhelmed, first by wounded men but increasingly by the large numbers seriously ill with dysentery and other diseases.

Sick and injured troops were sent down to the narrow beach at Anzac Cove, but this had no room for proper hospitals. There was little land safe from sniper fire and shelling, and medical staff were hit by stray bullets as they treated wounded men inside tents. The casualties therefore had to wait, sometimes for days, for evacuation on small launches to larger ships. Occasionally these were hospital ships, but because of the numbers of casualties, every available vessel was pressed into service.

Patients were taken to the Royal Navy headquarters at Mudros Harbour on the nearby Greek island of Lemnos. From there some were distributed to the 3rd Australian General Hospital set up on Lemnos in August. But most men had to endure a further sea voyage of several days on an overcrowded ship to Alexandria in Egypt. Some ships not clearly identified as hospital ships were torpedoed and sunk by enemy submarines on the way. Once the men arrived in Egypt, they could finally be treated in a New Zealand or Australian hospital staffed by doctors and nurses from home.