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[page 15]
27
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and would speak of you as her favourite sister". This almost invariably pulled a prize but you wanted to make sure in these cases that the old thing hadn't been dead a decade or so. I wrote fully a dozen letters for different chaps, with varying success.
After we had been in camp about three weeks, we had our first experience of a Zeppelin. It was Anzac Day and we were awakened just after midnight by a tremendous explosion which fairly shook the earth. It didn't take us long to realise that we were being shelled from somewhere but whether it was from the Channel or from the air we could not tell until we got out of our tents when we could hear aircraft engines and presently caught sight of the Zeppelin away up amongst the stars. She dropped a few more bombs whilst we were looking at her, but they all landed about 350 yards short of us and about 700 yards short of the New Zealander's Camp. She evidently thought she was immediately over the camp for she let all her bombs go almost at once. Fortunately they fell in a bit of a wood where they tore the ground up and slaughtered the trees for a hundred yards round each bomb hole. Ragged bits of shrapnel were driven clean through the trunks of trees 12 inches thick and embedded in other trees further back. The bombs weigh 120 lbs. and are equal in power to a naval 8 inch shell. They make considerable noise as they come through the air which is generally enough time to allow you to throw yourself flat on the ground which is the safest position. Our crowd didn't bother about dropping on the ground, but satisfied themselves with standing out in front of their tents and cursing the Zeppelin - cursing as only Australian soldiers can. She passed clean over the top of my tent but did not drop any bombs on the way. It was a very dark night and from the height she was she could not