Item 01: Frank Hurley war diary, 21 August-28 October 1917 - Page 18
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[Page 18]
altered by the incessant bombardment of three years. Around this region the enemy have been forced back but two or three miles!
Putting on our shrapnel helmets & carrying our gas masks we walked across this desert, whose outskirts are already becoming green with grass, past myriad sandbagged dugouts to Lock 7, once an old canal, but now just a swampy depression. Here the awfulness of the battlefield burst on one. The great howitzer & batteries were in full operation & the ear-splitting din was followed by the scream of a hail of shell which swept over our heads to the enemy lines. Things were very quiet however, & our harassing fire was only lightly replied to. We plodded through shell craters & shell-torn ground littered with fragments of burst shell & shrapnel, torn equipment & smashed entanglements, over the blood-drenched battlefield till