Item 02: Leslie Kemnitz Stuart diary, 4 March-28 December 1916 - Page 165
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[Page 165]
[Thursday 1 June]
Another day of intermittent shelling. The Germans seem to have ignored the front line & are evidently bent on making things lively round the batteries. In the morning they sent a few over & in the afternoon started a systematic & heavy shelling of the batteries behind our billet. It is a weird sensation to hear the big fellows screaming over the house to phump [?] into the next field. I am always expcecting them to drop one short for luck.
Today one of our aeroplanes was shot down & our observation balloon broke loose & was very heavily shelled over 1000 shells must have been poured into it. but the last we saw of it in the dusk it was sailing serenely onward in a cloud of shrapnel smoke. The observer came down in a parashute [parachute] soon after it broke loose