Item 01: Frank Hurley war diary, 21 August-28 October 1917 - Page 49
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[Page 49]
remnants remain. In many cases the roofs & top stories have been blown away & the fronts shorn off, so that the smashed up rooms gape into the street. In other places there are just heaps of broken bricks & a few standing pillars. Roaming amongst the domestic ruins made me sad. Here & there were fragments of toys: what a source of happiness they once were. Bedsteads broken & twisted almost into knots lay about, almost hidden with brick dust. A stove riddled with shrapnel. Roofs poised on almost shot away walls, & walls balanced in every impossible fashion, that seemed to defy all laws of equilibrium & gravitation. Down in the cellars, quite a number of Royal Artillerymen had their billets, & it made me grin to see their cooks with funny improvised ranges, concocting stews from their army rations in some hovel which admitted as much light through