Item 02: Frank Hurley war diary, 28 October 1917-24 January 1918 - Page 12
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[Page 12]
ruins of Ypres 3,500 feet below, in front, a vast stretch of smoky misty flat desolation, crisscrossed with familiar tracks, and scintillating with innumerable red flashes. Looking back, was a wondrous bird's eye over more peaceful landscapes, but peppered with little round white dots and almost equal sized circular pools of water. The little white dots were an army in bivouac, and the pools, shell craters brimming with the recent rains. Over this vista rolled banks of heavy woolpack cumulus clouds, and a veil of smoke from thousands of smoking chimneys.
Scarcely had we been in the air more than ½ an hour, when a fleet of 17 gothas (Boche planes) came over. They came down from the North and were heavily laden with bombs. When about two miles off they