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[Page 517]

8.

lying along the road side. What a wonderful story this dead old village could tell - the objective of an Australian American attack on 4th July 1918. It is awe inspiring in its kind of sacred desolation. Sacred to the memory of those who fell amongst the ruins. And some family had even come back to this. Not a house had been left on its foundations & the family had built a humpy out of the debris amongst the ruins. It looked like an early pioneers settlement amongst a forest of dead stumps.

We found what was once the church with some difficulty & photographed it. It was a heap of stones with an irregularly shaped piece of wall jutting into the air as if to form a monument to that at its feet.

The sight of the whole place with its wonderful & awful memories was saddening in the extreme. I felt as if I were being hunted by the ghosts of the dead for disturbing their rest. And this was Hamel

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