Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

G. O. Hawkins papers, 1898-1920, being chiefly letters to his children, 1916-1920
MLMSS 5424 / Box 3 / Item 1

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Dec 1916
It was afternoon when I entered Ypres. One of those musical days when the wind and the sun-light seem to be on a mission of glory through the world, and the sky is the loftiest of poetry.
You know the kind of day sky with great billowing clouds of snow and silver shaped like bearded gods and sleeping lions, passing slowly through the blue.
Well that was the kind of day it was, but there was the sadness of beauty and the strange chill whisper of natures plaintive secrets through it all, establishing a subtle melancholy which suited the dreary scene of desolation
And what a scene it was.
Imagine a city in which there is not a single building scarless of bombardment.
The first sight that met my view on entering was the railway station absolutely wrecked, and house after house, close by, smashed to heaps of rubble. Then it was a common sight to see the whole front or the whole end of a three or four story house blown clear away disclosing the interiors of rooms still furnished with pictures on the walls, and many of the apartments

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half blocked up with smashed in wreckage from the roof or from the floor above.
Again and again and for terrace after terrace I came across wreckage like this.
Completely furnished bedrooms with great broken beams and tons of brickwork scattered everywhere; broken bedsteads, chairs, tables, mirrors, torn curtains and nick nacks all churned into heaps of wreck.
Walls with great shell holes pierced through them.
Walls blackened with fire towering up in broken sections from charred heaps of ruin like giant shapes of ghostly things
The jagged and scarred portions of buildings left standing, so tall and column like in many instances give quite a weird aspect to the place.
Sometimes I came across merely the stronger corners of a building left, the rest was a heap of debris on the ground.
Many places were pierced with shell holes and cracked and tottering but still with the onward stage of intact existence. On entering some of these I found pictures, furniture etc just as when left by the people

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This city was almost quite empty of civil population but in many of the half shattered buildings and in the cellars beneath, hundreds of soldiers were quartered, and hiding in the ruins, there were many busy guns licking their angry lips with fiery tongues all day long as they spat forth shells towards the trenches some miles away. I found the headquarters of the 7th Field Company so began once more another carrer
These quarters were in a half shell shattered building in a narrow street near the great church. Sand bag [indecipherable] protected the street doors and windows. The upper stories were smashed to wreck. The few lower rooms and cellars were alone safe or passably so.
Each section of the company was billeted in a separate ruin. I was put in No1 section and soon found where our billet was. This was a fine brick structure, a convent school, or

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rather had been such
We used one of the large ground floor rooms for a kitchen and the half wrecked first floor rooms to sleep in
The back portion of the building had been blown to glory and all the passageways to our bed rooms were littered with wreckage.
Some large rooms upstairs were just a mass of broken roof and books.
These books, – I did want to have time to rummage amongst them for there were many rare old works to be found.
Strange old books in French with quaint illustrations.
The whole place was such a wreck and the rats which ran over us at night were so hungry and large
All this while there is the noise of our guns, and every now and then shells whizzing into town from the enemy smashing up to more complete ruin the ruin already made.
Good night Love to all
Still waiting for furlough
Am well Mother & children
More when not so tired

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1.
First Haw Eye Witness
Description of an air battle
& the destruction of Allied Observation Balloons
At a spot that might best be described as being somewhere in France there are several small military huts and a number of newly erected tents within easy stepping distance of a Peasants house.
Here, with his staff of officers and men, is camped the C.R.E. of a particular Division of the Australian Army Corps.
In one of the huts there is a soldier studying a war map whereon is marked, in vivid red, the front line of the Allies and, in bright blue, that of the enemy.
Probably the map shows no new development of importance for the soldier raises his head with the manner of one who need has no need to be concerned and he glances with untroubled eyes through the small window that gives him light.

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2.
There he sees, as though he were gazing into a framed picture, a scene that an Artist might overlook as being barren of pleasing features but which to him is beautiful enough and full of interest.
The sky is a pale blue with not so much as a whiff of cloud in sight. The air is vitalized with a light breeze that suggests the wafting of silver wings. The sunlight is a soft flood of gold.
The foreground of the scene is a meadow of vivid color as though a mighty brush laden with green and gold from the pallet of Spring had been dashed across from side to side and had been carried with a broad sweep to the middle distance to strike against the darker green of a hawthorn hedge with the effect of a rich carpet.
Through many grey days

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of cloud and mist that meadow had lain in the plainness of dull green until there came one day when the mist was lifted like a veil, and the pall of cloud overhead, was drawn aside.
That was the first day of sunlight and with it came the swallow to skim the flatness of the meadow, and with it also came the cuckoo forlorn and plaintive and drifting with her undulating flight from hedge to hedge. At the closing of that day there was gold and crimson in the west, and then a rosy twilight, and then a dewy night made balmy with faint scents distilled from clover and from grasses by the sunbeams.
It was during the later darkness of that night that an army of daisies marched into the meadow to brighten the dullness of its green.
There they were next morning like stars, and as night followed night army after army of them

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entered the meadow till in places they snowed the green over with their whiteness. Spring scattered through their ranks thousands of golden dandelions that there might be miniature suns amongst the stars. Then in multitudes came the envious buttercups like the onrush of an enemy: they rose suddenly from the corner of the grass and held their gilded chalices high to catch the first sweetness of the dew: they grew till they almost hid from view the snowy stars and golden suns, and their envy made them bitter, so bitter indeed that the low uddered cows, pasturing in the meadow, passed them over and left them to grow tall and rank as weeds in their pride: then their stems became coarse and overloaded with blossoms no longer like shapely cups of gold but spread and gross.
There they are now as high as

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a tall mans knee and in so many millions that the meadow is more golden than green.
The hawthorn hedge, that the meadow lies against like a carpet, harbours shadows in the thick green of its base while the sunny crest of it is flecked with bloom as white as snow and as sweet as the incense of a dream. Just beyond and partly hidden by the hedge are clustered buildings of a farm, a cottage with white walls and a thatched roof, stables and lofty barns with red tile roofs.
The moving heads of idle horses can be seen above a low part of the hedge. Further to the left the white pinnacles of military tents overtop its crest of snowy blossoms.
Soldiers are billeted in the barns and stables over there as is the case at almost every farm-house in the district. Those buildings, the barns and stables have been-----------------

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given over as shelters for the troops. The little homely old-fashioned cottages alone are left sacred to those of the civil population who are here, - young women and girls, old dames, and very old men, who remain to carry on with the tilling of the soil and the sowing for another harvest.
The young and the middle aged men are fighting at the front, not far away, to hold the goodly land from the enemy and to save it from the devastation of war.
To the farm buildings beyond the hedge there is a background of clustered trees. On the right and the left flanks of the picture extends a vista of more distant landscape where can be seen hedged fields and, here and there, a copse of puces or beeches. Such features, rapidly diminishing by perspective, are repeated till form, in the low-lying-land, is dissolved and lost in the haze of a remote horizon.

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Back in the middle distance, at a point half-right in the gold of the meadow, there is an old pond with pollard willows leaning round the edge, trees that in winter time become gnarled and grotesque and suggest forms of hideous bent old men, but are now beautiful in their broomy clusters of slender branches and airy leaves. These man-pruned trees seem to fit most naturally as features of the tame and cultured scenery of the land. Standing in the sun-filled grass that ruins the pond and glowing in the soft sunlight like little pink statues of stained ivory, are three stark naked soldiers who have just had a dip in the glassy water there. The flesh tints of those bare bodies against the gold of the meadow are delicate touches of color where so much is vivid and intense of hue. In the marshy overflow of another pond that lies further to the right are a couple of French soldiers in their national

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uniform of remote-blue. One of them is angling with a rod and line for the edible frog.
Hidden up to their udders in the growing fodder of the meadow are several cows of the color of deep brown that darkens to their prominent points till it has the effect of having been burnt: their white horns furnish the most intense highlights in the picture.
On the left where the meadow is closed in by a hedged lane there are about a hundred soldiers of the British Army digging a trench that may be required for defence purposes later on: They use only short-handled shovels for the soil is soft: Those portions of the trench already completed by them cannot now be traced by the eye for the whole of the breast works above the surface are neatly camaflaged with sods of living grass. In the near foreground,

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on the right, is a bell tent that has been erected as the sleeping quarters of the Q.M. and several others of the C.R.Es staff: its canvas cone, except where accidentally camaflaged with purple shadows from a nearby fruit tree, glows white in the sunlight. Beyond the tent, at a spot almost in line with the bathing pond, some Australian soldiers, with sharp spades, are cutting away the thick growth of grass and buttercups to form a cricket pitch. This is being done so that the officers might be able to play there in the twilight after their evening dinner
There is, in the simple scene, a strange mixture of activity and repose, and there is also the beauty of Natures harmonious coloring and the contrast of light and shade that gives definition to form and brilliance of tone.
Added to all that the eye perceives there is the accompaniment

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of sound, the various minor noises of a military camp and the ceaseless booming, cracking and roaring of friendly guns, that lurk unseen in natural ambush of trees and hedges and beneath artificial foliage, not far away at the rear of the meadow.
The soldier who is gazing through the window of his hut suddenly becomes conscious of animated voices as though some event of great interest to the men of the camp was being observed and discussed.
The voices are on the outer side of the wall behind him where, in a totally opposite direction to the meadow of buttercups, the camp faces towards the battle front. A group of soldiers are there with their faces lifted to the sky. They are watching an observation balloon falling in flames some distance away.
It has just become the prize of

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an enemy aeroplane and drops gently like an airy jewel in the clear blue of the sky.
High in the air out there at the same distance forward are floating a number of similar baloons wherefrom brave men, suspended in their basket cabins are peering into the enemy lines.
The huge sausage – like forms of these are conspicuous objects.
They are anchored to earth at considerable distances apart and the line they make in the sky indicates the lay of the front line trenches of which, however, it must be understood they are well to the rear.
Fritz is aware of the suitability of the weather for observation and he is displeased and uneasy that there should be so many stations aloft from which his foe can pry into his movements.
He has therefore sent forth one of his most expert war eagles

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to get rid of such annoyances.
The airman entrusted with the task has approached near enough to pepper one of the balloons with incendiary bullets and he has scored a win. The observers have long since escaped to mother earth by parachute and now the consumed baloon is disappearing behind a rise in the land scape, and a twirl of smoke up rises as it falls.
The plane can be seen no bigger than a bird high up in the blue. One of the on lookers remarks that no plane but that simple scourge sent forth by of the enemy is visible as yet, which is the truth. Angry words are muttered resenting the blunder that there seems to be in not having forces in the air to give battle to the bloody German who has just scored so well against us. But what battle can be given is already

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in progress. Our anti-air-craft guns are barking furiously from the ground and our machine guns are gabbling. Although this is all happening some distance away the fuss and fury of the noise is clearly audible. Diamond-like flickers of flame appear in the sky round the bird-like plane. We know this to be the bursting of our shrapnel White flecks of cloud no larger than snow balls come into existence in the blue These mark exactly where our shells have exploded. Still the enemy plane soars serenely and defies all that is hurled at it from the earth.
Suddenly it darts away and swoops like a hawk down towards another balloon and in an instant the lumbering shape is in flames. In the full light of day that burning mass is bleached to a transparent brilliance that has the beauty

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and spotted sky: it becomes lost to sight: many eyes are seeking to pick it up again: Suddenly somewhat further to the right, another balloon bursts into flame and falls like a crumpled page as it burns. The plane is sighted once more: it is soaring high and heading for the lines from which it came.
The German Airman with his tally of three of the Allies observation balloons brought to earth, is well satisfied. This, however, is not the sole reason for his departure.
British planes have made their appearance and are now giving chase; but they have arrived too late.
Such scenes of occurrences in the sky have the appearance of being arranged for entertaining the vision rather than serious engagements in which life is threatened with death. Up there, away from objects on the earth, distance

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in the lofty space reduces largeness so abruptly to dwarf dimensions that there exists no sequence of perspective.
This has the effect of converting a reality to a picture that may, in many cases, be viewed with more interest than concern.
It is only a few minutes ago that the first burning baloon was seen to fall, and now two others have gone, and all the fuss of the event has died away, leaving the sky once more clear and serene.
The British planes are returning from a fruitless chase.
Such events are but fleeting incidents and there are many of a like nature along the battle front.
A soldier lowers his strained eyes to the ground and growls:-
"Its Fritzs day out, all right!"
A Runner who has not long since come in from a Company of Engineers doing duty at the front, mutters:-
"He’s got better blooming planes than we have, and a damned side

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better airmen but he aint got better Bastards in the bloody trenches."
A wasp with wings like films of honey and a black and golden body takes loving interest in the adamantine visage of the Quarter Master who is trying to make a cigarette with a piece of note paper and rubbed-up pipe-tobacco. The friendly insect is at once christened a new name which is vivid enough but inaccurate as a statement of coloring and would probably astonish an entomologist. A sapper with a vocabulary equal to that of the Q.M. increases the length of the name as he deals the sociable visitor a smashing blow with his hat and fells it, in a buzzing fury, to the grass. There, in nervous contortion, it rolls close to the bloom of a dandelion where sleeps a butterfly posed as a jewel of bright enamel on a

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setting of gold. In stinging itself to end its own agony this puny subject of animate creation blindly flounders till the butterfly, affrighted, flits away to reinact the illusion of a jewel where there might be peace as well as honied beauty to give it rest.
From a field of corn, that lies hidden behind the hedges of the lane where the trench diggers are still at work, a skylark twinkles upward as straight as the spire of a temple, and with her she carries her silver net of jewels, and shakes them into melody as she lifts. It seems that she bears with her, as a precious tribute to heaven, the beauty that is too divine and too chaste to be left below where man in his greed, selfishness and lust has become debased and gross and is spending his energies in the savagery, the squalor, the wreck and the bloody strife of outrageous war.

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4 July 1917
Resting at an intersection of two roads where there is an outward bend in one. A grass and leaf covered wall of earth forms an emerald barrier on one side. This is surmounted by splendid trees massive and thick with clustering foliage which spreads halfway across the road and towers high above.
Behind the wall there is an orchard, the close growing trees of which are full in leaf and burdened with fruit in the green. This orchard fills in the bend in the road. From here the ground falls and becomes the slope of a valley which has been chosen as a site for a military camp. Tents, and huts, cook houses, stores, Hospital huts, Salvation Army Huts,
Expeditionary Force Canteens, Soldiers clubs etc

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Reveille sounds at about half past two in the weird sleep-bound moments of the early day.
We are up before dawn while yet the silver night lingers and holds the world in its romantic darkness, which is not of gloom.
Candles glimmer in the cook-houses, and we are soon at an early breakfast in the low huts which have been our quarters for a time.
There in dim candlelight the troops are rapidly through with the hot tea, bread and butter, and bully beef which constitutes the meal; and then there is a scene of almost confusion as men are moving with their shifting shadows whilst packing their haversacks and adjusting their equipment.

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Now each man has harnessed himself and bears his burden of equipment with ammunition, haversack, water bottle, Pack, gas mask, gas helmet, and bayonet; and his rifle slung over his shoulder; and is ready to "fall in"
The transport portion of the company, with the pontoons and limbers is now well on the road ahead. We heard the rumble and clonk, and clinck and clank, and jingle and jangle, and clomp and crunch of it, and the curse of its drivers as it went.
We were just tumbling out of our sleep there, and the strange pre-dawn silence was broken by the lumbering noise.
Our blankets have gone on the limbers.
We are thankful for that.

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Yesterday evening we had orders to wrap our blankets in our oil sheets ready for transport. This left us with our great coats only to sleep in, but the weather is mild now. Last night we were not at all uncomfortable
All preparations for departure were made yesterday. The pontoon waggons were loaded. Also the tool carts and limbers. Cooks gear and quartermaster stores as far as possible were packed and put aboard, and everything made ready for this early start.
There is no time lost this morning.
We are now on the parade ground.
Formalities of the parade are rapidly through. The Sergeants prove their sections.

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The major issues his orders and we are soon in columns of route passing from the camp on to the metalled road, and forward away, while yet the darkness is unwilling to be gone.
As we march on the echoing hardness we gradually fall into step with an easy swing. The troops in splendid cheer strike up a merrily whistled tune.
As yet there hardly any light on the earth. It is nigh impossible to see the road at our feet, and difficult to make out the forms of men in the second section of fours in front of us.
Still we are wrapped in shadow which is not of gloom but of silvery night

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We have to leave the hard metalled road and make a detour through the dewy grass of the old shell-pocked battlefield, for we come to the weary figure of a sentry standing by a dim lamp in the centre of the road, and he informs us that a section of the way has been closed as dangerous on account of a vast ammunition dump being afire close by.
This warning we quite expected for we knew of the trouble yesterday. The dump was not far from our camp of huts, and maybe we were the first to know of the disaster.
All day the bombardment of it entertained us as we were loading up the carts and cleaning the camp. Hour after hour it continued like a grim parody of

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the front
Millions of cartridges had crackled like frying serpents and thousands of bombs and shells had burst and boomed and roared as though the place was a nest of evil monsters finding exit from the depths of Hell
So near to our camp was this storm centre of destruction that our huts shook every now and then with the violence of explosion, and the earth thrudded with shock.
At mid-day before any sentry had been put on to warn traffic, some of our troops were close by watching the aimless display of fury which the heated coils and vermillion fangs of fire had so let loose; and while watching, a motor car had dashed on the scene, bearing a colonel and officers of his staff.
One of our boys had raised his hand and brought the car to a halt.

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"What’s the matter" asked the Colonel
"Bomb dump on fire a few yards ahead, Sir"
‘Crash-Cra-ra-r-r-rack
bang-cra-ra-r-r-rack Krupp boom, bang,bang, crackle-ackle crack-a-a ackle Ping Boom Bang’
And then an avalanche of shards and brass, and iron, and bricks and dust, had flown across the road, and a great eruption of all manner of debris had spread fan-wise high in the air.
The Colonel had grabbed his steel helmet and covered his head in a crouching position.
One of his officers who was out of the car at the moment had sought shelter beneath it. A scotty by the roadside had vanished behind the standing portion of an old ruined wall.
In a few moments all sorts

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of fragments, had fallen back to earth, and no one had been hurt
A great out-swelling cloud of evil gasses and smoke had risen like a summer cloud and with its great unfolding curves of light and shade had become a shape of beauty not unworthy of the sky.
"Ah" the Colonel had said "you saved our lives sapper, I shouldn’t have liked being snuffed out by that. To be killed in action against the enemy is a different thing. But an accident like that, No, No."
So all day long that centre of fury unquenchable had played its noisy parody on war. And puny man had been powerless to bring it to an end
So must it be when man brings the elements of kindly

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nature to evil opposition, the tragedy of power over masters him.
At odd times through the night we had heard the unkerbed villainy of fire and powder and cordite; and even now as we march by, widely circumventing the place, we can hear the crack of a few cartridges and the occasional burst of a bomb.
We are soon through the sweet dewy grass and once more back on the road of metal, the hard firmness of which is welcome to our feet
Here we march on between noble old trees which flank the road as giant sentinals in file They appear massy and black in the last fleeting hours of night and they show up against

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the silver of the sky in doubtful outline which yet is sufficient to tell their story.
Their story of the recent past which is still so present in memory.
Is it not rather a tragedy?
A little of it I may tell, but not all; for that which they have bravely endured, and that which they have witnessed would fill volumes.
Terrific bombardment of guns under command of opposing armies have shot their tender fingers away and broken their beautiful arms short at the elbows or wrenched them off at the shoulders. And many a cruel iron shard has slashed deep into the [indecipherable] of their graceful columns, while schrapnel has wounded and pitted then with leaden pellets, many of which are yet embedded

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in their sap
Under such merciless hail of bombing iron and lead and the lash of fire. Their mantles of last summer’s green had been torn to shreds till autumn had only poor remnants left for her magic transformation to browns and reds and gold.
And now for this new summer which has come to them with almost peace, there is little left
Yet how wonderful is the hope of life.
Nature has clothed the poor wounded bodies and the broken extended arms in fresh green again. Rags and tatters of green. Yes, but fresh budded, and green for all that. New woven from her looms of season mystery as before: and

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beautiful and joyous and tender.
No longer do they meet overhead as once before to tell the story of the wayside each to each. No longer do they completely arch the road and cloister it as a place of green and shadow.
The ruthless jagged pruning of them, their leanness and their rags are all too plain even in the darkness of this silver night.
Here and there on one side of the road or the other there is an extra wide streatch of sky to fault the even pace in the ranks of those rugged giant shapes. It seems that so many sentinals have failed by sleep and fallen out to slumber elsewhere unseen

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But it is not so, for by the eye, by straining in the darkness, can plainly see, fast rooted in each place, a splintered stump, and by it a shattered tree – trunk with its branches leafless and dead.
Their story is plain enough.
The tragedy of each is clear.
Beneath the trees further along the road there is a long chain of heavy crouching shapes, like monster beetles of a shadow world. We are marching past them now, and we know they are motor wagons of an ammunition column stationed here where the trees, in large measure, screen them from observation.

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of the German aeroplane.
They are drawn up there facing the roadway with a uniform half- left turn, on plank stands. These indispensable mechanised transports become the very homes of those who drive them. There is a driver and an attendant to each.
As we pass them now we know each beetle-hooded shape hides two sleeping men, and we envy them their slumber and their peace. There is a dim light in one or two of these waggons but there is not a sound down the long line of them as we march by.
That hushed hour has come when all things acquire a weird presence.

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The dull silver of the sky is as a wall. Against it the ragged tree shapes at regular intervals and the line of waggon hoods closer spaced but of equal regularity combine with dark masses and doubtful edges to form a strange frieze, fretted, as it were, out of shadow on a gigantic scale.
Now we have left the slumbering wagons behind and are marching on.
Here we are passing almost the same scene. But the long sleeping line is part of a supply column this time. Far away we can hear the guns at the front as we have heard them night after night and day after

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day. And at times we can see a pale flash above the horizon as though there was distant lightening in the air,
Now we are passing a tented hollow. Candles are lit and troops are moving and cursing and laughing here. Horses are being harnessed and chains are clinking.
‘Snowy’ in our moving ranks mentiones that it is the camp of the twenty -- th battalion, and Scotty concludes that the boys there are astir for an early move like ourselves. A runner on a motor cycle flashes by like a mechanical ghost, filling the air with a rapid volley of sound which soon fails

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in our wake as we march on.
Again we are passing a tent camp of camps tents. But there is a profound stillness of sleep here. The white tents loom like little pyramids dimly seen.
Now we pass a watering point where a few stray horses are gathered together discussing the stupidity of man. We can just see their bulky forms and hear their occasional clomp.
The march seems ceaseless. There is a constant tread tread tread tread of feet with now and then a fault in time and a shuffling change of step.
The troops discuss the prospect of a halt with many curses

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Now there is a field hospital on our left.
We can see the Union Jack and the Red Cross side by side like a pair of large black handkerchiefs slowly flapping against the silver sky. The large tents and the small tents are but outlines. There is peace and silence and slumber here.
The burden of our equipment and packs has now become two fold in weight and we are wet though with sweat.
The troops mutter and curse, sing and laugh and joke, grumble, whistle and endure; while they all hope for a spell and a rest.

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At last comes the order to ‘halt’
Then the yet more welcome order
"Fall out on right side of the road"
The troops just shuffle and tumble away from the metalled way of the road and throw themselves down, burdens and all, on the dew drenched grass close by. The packs to their aching backs form solid supports of rest which are almost pillows of comfort under the circumstances.
A draught from the water bottle and a cigarette brings good humour back to most of them. But the minutes of rest fly all too quickly.

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The major is wandering along in the shadows to find out how the boys are standing the march
"How are your feet Jones." We hear him ask
"All right Sir" comes the answer
And then again we hear him, nearer toward the rear
"Well how are you standing it Bland"
"Not too well Sir, My crook knee is going a bit
"Can you manage to keep going" The majors electric torch flashes, and we know he is having a look at Bland, as he asks the question.
"Yes Sir, I can stick it" replies Bland.

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"Good" and the major passes on continuing his enquiries down the long line of resting troops.
Ten minutes has gone
(It seems but five)
"Fall in" The order is well-nigh hateful for the moment.
The troops stagger up and shuffle to their places in fours on the road.
"At ease; Quick march"
We are moving forward once more with that everlasting tread tread tread.
The boys are soon singing a song that tells of home, or whistling the tune of it.
 A glow now faintly glows with rose lights in the East.

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To those of us who notice little things it is remarkable how far north of true east this glow first appears. Dawn is breaking and the blot of night will soon expand to a beautiful world.
On account of light mist in the sky all through the night, only a few pale stars have been visible and these are failing now.
The pole star has vanished
A gilt touch enters into the pale blush of rose.
Objects of the middle distance are slowly growing into shape, but clinging veils of haze and land mists of ghostly grey are tangled still with the [indecipherable] of fleeting

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night, and there’s little yet builded for the day.
Outer edges of such broad features as woods and even the skyline are uncertain and remote.
But there is a growing purity in the higher sky.
Shrouds of grey are taking the form of clouds with clear touches of light on their lofty edges.
The silver of night has failed and vanished of its dull gilt and now the sky is bleached blue, brighten-ing each minute.
Soon there is light enough to see the scarlet of poppies by the wayside
And soon, and rapidly, nights shadows have disappeared while yet the holy grey of dawn

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clings low upon the world.
We are entering the ruined town of B------
The freshness of a new born day opens like a wonderful flower.
The air is sweet with dew distilled insence of the grasses, and fragrant with perfume of the simple blooms of the fields.
We are marching on the cobble stones of a deserted street.
Our measured footfall echoes as we pass through the emptiness of ruin
The Eastern sky is now clear and definite, and enriched with decided crimson and gold. This is so, high above the world, but at the horizon all is yet held in the mist and

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haze of grey.
On either side of us are ruined buildings, many of them roofless and shattered to mere heaps of rubbish; Some with their tile stripped rafters skeleton-like against the sky. Many, consisting of two or three storeys, with their fronts torn away, leaving the wrecked interiors of rooms open to view like the strange scenery of a play.
The fireplaces, the paper on the walls, and various little signs tell of the once sacred houses thus so rudely disclosed and laid bare and seen to make pathetic appeal to be curtained from the

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open glare of the world.
Only shapeless portions of walls remain of many buildings, and of many more there is nothing left but heaps of broken bricks and the dust of mortar and plaster.
Masses of ruin-debris are everywhere in between the formless standing shapes of wreck.
Twisted iron, splintered beams, and shattered slate and tiles are broad-cast in the wide-spread tangle of delapidation.
Gaping cellars yawn, and old wells are now but open pits, putrid with rubbish and filth.
Standing walls are pierced with shell holes, and chipped with shrapnel

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Of some buildings there is nothing left but a slender towering corner of brickwork.
Of others the end walls and a broken backed roof alone remains.
The most common feature of all this fearful destruction is the tearing away of a complete side or front of a building; something of which I have already mentioned. Look where you will and you are staring into the poor broken rooms of once sacred homes.
You can see the thickness of broken walls and depths of floor joists and you are strangely reminded of the sections of architectural designs.

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In the centre of the town where buildings have been close pressed and huddled cheek by jowel, all is a mass of indescribable wreck.
The principal public building which was; has been flattened to dust like a pack of scorched cards.
There is little to indicate its site, and nothing to tell of its past towering importance.
Troops who entered this town on the heels of the departing Hun can speak of its fine appearance for it was then almost intact. They can tell you how it was selected to billet one of our headquarters staff, and how, on the eighth day after the Huns evacuation of the town it was blown out of existence by the vile

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explosion of a secret mine long hidden in the cellars beneath by the cunning Hun, and fired by clock work.
As we pass this historical spot on this early morning march, there is with us an officer of the tunnellers who was instrumental in saving several men from the ruined cellars after the explosion.
To do this he and a party of sappers worked inceasingly for four days and nights.
There is a typical town square fronting the site of the vanished building, and in it a stone pedestal almost undamaged and still bearing in gold letters, the name of a famous French general who in 1872 beat the Prussians

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in the battle of B----
From this pedestal the Huns have taken away a bronze statue of the man at whose hands they had so long ago suffered defeat.
On every side of us there is ruin.
Narrow twisting streets cross the winding street we traverse, and down them all, is the same picture of absolute delapidation, and wreck, and desolation
Roofs as skeletons
Roofs stripped of all but a few raffed patches of tile shards.
Roofs hanging as broken draggling shapes and with dangling beams asway.
And beneath and between the roofs, is all the other wreckage I have tried to tell you of. The

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shreds of loose timbers and torn iron and spouting hang, and sway, and rattle in the wind.
Loosened masses of plaster flop, and torn edges of wall paper flap.
And they flop and flap and clap together, making weird and hollow sounds.
No matter where you may wander in this wilderness of shell wrought destruction you notice again and again the ruin and the similar character of ruin.
Where I almost repeat myself in this plain description, I do so intentionally. For that is true to the fact of seeing things as they really are.
Damp old cellars gape at the pavement edge on each

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side of the street like sepulchres rudely opened, their vaulted brickwork smashed through by high explosive shells
Narrow business places and shops, once neat and trim and bright-faced in their little world of commerce, are now blurred and shapeless parts of the general chaos
Again the [indecipherable] characteristic feature of ruin is noticeable. The fronts of buildings, from doorstep to parapet, have been wholly shattered down, leaving apartments of their several floors and toy-like attics open to the glare of day with its searching beams of gold, and to the soft dull silver of night with its burnished twinkling points:- the stars.

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Quaint stairways and old-fashioned cupboards and nooks and corners are disclosed to view. Also smoke darkened homely ingles, and shelves.
In many of the upper rooms there is a litter of broken beds and furniture and other simple household effects
Scattered through the debris of bricks and mortar which covers the damaged tile-paved floors of shops and stalls, are torn and wet-glued volumes of romance and science and art. Of these quite a number bear the dates of years gone and generations forgotten. Some are illustrated with old fashioned wood-cuts.
These parts alone are easily read by me. But the letter-press being in French is more difficult.

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As we march through this quaint old town of the French, now changed by the touch of evil war from a place of homely peace and rest, to a weird scene of wreck and desolation, I could tell you much which may not be told.
However that cannot be, for while it is war, grim silence must seal down many pages.
Aye, and even after war it were best that that seal remain unbroken.
Of many of the simple things which I may yet tell you, to give some impression of so that you may see as in a picture that which I see in reality I must weary you with some

[Page 58]
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a few more.
In the small yards and garden areas at the rear of shops and dwellings throughout the town, grasses and weeds and thistles are growing [indecipherable] and tall. Also there broad leaved docks and stinging nettles.
And the splendid green of it all, covers up the scattered Toad-stools and moss, and fungus claims right and place with better growth

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And double poppies with their manifold silken skirts beautiful and pinked at the hem to lacery, stagger up through the thickness of the green with their delicate splendour bowed to the weeds; while the tender arms and gentle fingers of convolvulus embrace and caress the grasses and climb above to bind the broken things of wreck together, which yet remain unhidden; their snow white blooms like trumpets of a fairy world.
In these sad places where-from the yea and nay of man has been withheld so long, nature by a wilful revolution of her own seems to have formed

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a strange republic of wild and wayward freedom in which the beauteous aristocrat of the garden and the scorned weed- bred plebeian of the wayside are equal and as sisters.
Almost it seems that nature has given a charter of freedom to each rare plant and common weed that they may with a riot of growth over wrap and hide away from heaven the ruin and the wreck and shame of mortal man.
War which has made terrified slaves of man has left all that we call the mean and least worthy of breathing things, free to devour and destroy.
The rich brown slip is here in countless numbers dispoiling the plant of its

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blade and bloom and fruit.
The vile rat is here in his hundreds.
All these enemies of man have, with the license of freedom, built up little armies of their own.
The slow moving snail is here creeping over damp fragments of ruin and old garden walls. His beautifully voluted shell appears a burden.
A search amongst the rubbish of wreck at the root of the weeds and grasses and flowers may reveal many little things which are mute evidence of tragedy and romance.
An idle wanderer through the stricken town might look, and find as I have, a pair of childrens shoes, or an old wooden clog, or perhaps

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a childish toy, or the fragments of a plaster saint.
Or maybe the whole of these simple items in a little heap together
And side by side with such pathetic signs of a vanished home and its lost or scattered humanity, there might be found a German bayonet or bomb, rusted with damp and curiously streaked by the silver traverse of a snail. And in close touch with this evil evidence of the enemy there may be a packet of French cartridges, covered with mildew and green with verdigris, while near by lie the green-grey rags of a German overcoat and parts of a British equipment.

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Could you peep into that empty room there at rear of the narrow shop over the way, you could see the skeleton of a swinging cot, and by a touch you would find it yet able to rock on its pivots. Almost beneath it, amongst the scattered brickbats and powdered plaster on the floor, lies a great iron shell; unexploded.
A dud
Its copper band bears the groove marks of the gun which fired it. Its brazen nose, almost undamaged, is red with brick dust.
You wonder why it did’nt explode.
I wondered at that.
We often wonder and marvel at such things

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Yet they happen in this war.
When you notice the gaping hole torn through the thickness of two heavy walls, you look at the shell again.
It is too heavy for you to lift.
You wonder again.
Climb up that flight of rickety stairs, where many of the treads are splintered with shrapnel, and some torn away by shell-shards
Pass the first floor of wrecks which seems to remain by a miracle.
Climb again and creep through the litter of debris and beams of the second floor
Scramble up the next short flight of creaking steps and

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enter the low attic where daylight streams in garishly through a broken roof, the timbers of which stand out like the ribs of some strange and monsterous skeleton hoisted high in the air.
In the attic there is the everlasting disorder of wreck and ruin round you still,
But lo - from a colored picture on the wall the calm face of the peaceful Jesus looks you full in the eyes.
The face of that brave strong man of mercy and of unfailing love.
Here where a whole community has been dispersed, scattered, lost; and thousands of houses crushed for ever out of existence. Where nothing

[Page 66]
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can again, be as it was before; You think, (while your eyes are upon that face,) of the stupendous utterance which tells of how the very world itself might pass away.
But not the words of truth.
Your thoughts become burdened with many complex questions and doubts which have come to you time after time, (but only) to again be hidden back in your mind, unexpressed, lest you be misunderstood.
There is a plaster Mary leaning back in the corner almost beneath the picture of Jesus. Her arms which once held a quaint little plaster child, are broken at the wrists and empty and she is for ever looking down

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with the sorrow of an irrepairable loss.
High on the wall you can see where a cruicifix crucifix has hung, and you feel sure some thoughtless vandal has taken it as a souvenir.
Look carefully round the shapeless place which was once a room, hallowed no doubt by associations of a lifetime and rememberences of generations, and made thrice holy as the grotto of a family shrine
The sacred corner of that most sacred spot on earth to some :- the chapel of a home.
There is little to see, but look! Here is the print frock of a little child half covered

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with broken bricks and tiles.
Near it is a womans dress of deep mourning; and a sombre bonnet of black crape and ribbands; religiously sepulchral in French peasant style, with black glass adornments and beads.
The handle of an umberella protrudes from a heap of rubbish and splinters in the far corner, and a mans velveteen waiscoat is there in rags alongside the brightly painted fragments of a toy go-cart and a broken china dog.
And there too lies the heavy iron shard of an evil shell; sharp and jagged of edge, and browned with rust.

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Ruin, ruin, ruin. Nothing but ruin and wreck, and the desolation of war.
This little high perched chamber is but one of many, so barren and empty of all that once was there, and yet so stored with the unwritten tragedy of it all.
Ad Amidst the absolute wreck which means loss and end of much held valuable by mortality; the calm Jesus looks down and seems to say "Be not afraid"
And the poor Mary, heedless of her own broken arms, still with downcast face and sorrowing eyes searches as though she must search for ever in the ruins. Seeking the child which was; but is not there

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Is it wrong if you feel more sorry for the gentle Mary with her grief, than for the brave and patient Jesus with his everlasting peace?
Maybe not, for the Mary is ever with us with her loss; while the mighty Jesus is afar off and as distant and as doubtful as the giants of our childhood.
Come down from the little attic
Descend the splintered stairs
Pass through the tangled wreckage of the shop below.
Leap across the break in its vaulted cellar, which gapes like a tomb
And enter the cobbled street once more

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Can you march away and leave the place where the Jesus and the Mary are without a thought?
Nay, can you do so, without a host of thoughts?
Thoughts which come to question, and disturb, and haunt.
That place you have just now seen was once a home
Home, Ah what does that word mean.
It means all that which men may write of it, and much more which none may write nor tell.
It means the love and joy, laughter and music, fear and care, faith and duty, ambition, regret, gain loss and grief: and sorrow and despair, and the loyalty and honour of a little world.

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It means the title of a tragedy played unseen to the outer world
Even in places of peace it means all this
But here in France, what does it mean?
For Home is not, but was.
And the was of it is more than tragedy.
Our march is still through the town.
The day has almost fully come. The sky in the East has cleared. The last veil of night has been torn and cast aside.
The purity of beauty which is never so manifest in things of muddy earth, is there in that broad field of sky.

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As though the troubles of earth reach not above; nor yet its tarnish nor rust nor corruption; all is unsullied there where it seems the destroying hand of time has no command
The silver of the cloud swell and the gold which hems and tassels it with wealth; and the glorious purples and crimsons of its curtains, are riches and gems of light which none may miser or hoard in secret places where spiders stitch it is the shrouds of darkness and the sweat of fear erodes.
This magnificence is for all to share.
Neither the rich nor the poor by the strange favours of circumstance nor the gifts

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or opportunities of fortune can be thieves of its glory.
As we march on the new morn has thus come to be as a painted scene of light on the eastern wall of the sky blue dome, and the ragged shapes of ruin stand solid and sharp and fixed against the clear beauty of it
Yet the horizon is, as it were, in the vesture of dreams where the crimson is but as faint rose wine, with the gold and silver to the luster of mingled to the luster of dissolving pearls and the purple still in folds of cloister grey.
And as though a curtain were drifting with the breeze and close clinging to the very edge of the world there is

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a smear of sluggish haze lingering there to mist and mar the purity of day.
We know it is the heavy creeping breath of guns which are growling and barking in thousands at the front, some miles away.
But look! It leads to the making of a picture, and becomes, as an humble agency of the stage; chief factor to accentuate a vivid note of tragedy which this morning scene fits this morning scene
For the dimming shroud of it has so wrapped the great sun, just risen, that he is clipt of his blinding beams and hangs there as a clear edged globe, scarce

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a fingers breadth above the dipping image.
There in the murk and fume of leaden grey, while yet the higher sky is crystal clear and brilliant as with the luster and hues of new cut gems; hangs the great sun. Not as a symbol of glory, a tape of gold, or a dazzling source of life:
No! for he is robbed of all splendour, and is changed, as though by a miracle, to be a sign of the curse and the tragedy of war which troubles the earth. And, maybe, a sign of sacrifice, which we may not clearly read or understand.
There in the murk and fume of leaden grey he hangs like a great drop of blood

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Crimson Red blood.
And nothing more.
Once caught by the eye this crimson blot becomes the low centre point of a vivid picture and provides the key note to the tragedy of war which has been enacted there.
And as we march on still over the cobble stones of winding streets and lanes, this mighty blood drop catches the eye with its crimson, where gaps in the standing wreck of desolate ruin give momentary view beyond.

[Page 78]
1.
Eye Witness of
Australians & others embarking for the front Some for first time? I think not
from England

Here, at Southampton Docks, has arrived from the Australian Engineers Training Depot at Brightlingsea, a draft of troops.
They have just de-trained and, having been marched into a wharf shed that seems to extend for miles beneath a weary repetition of ugly roofing, stand awaiting further orders, as soldiers must. These men are to embark for France to re-inforce Engineer Companies of the A.I.F.
Many of them are Sappers who have already done their bit at the front but having recovered from the wounds that [indecipherable] them to Blighty are once more destined for the trenches.
There is the usual delay that attends all military movements on such occasions, for no single officer knows exactly when or where to fit his little bit of duty

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in the great jig-saw puzzle of arrangement designed by the higher command. That higher command generally plans with a pompous imbecility and vanity that disregards whatever it should dovetail into and adjust its own important self wisely and agreeably with. This is well known to all active service men who have not had the privilege of becoming tethered with red tape or of being consumed with the jealousies of the war office. However delay and ambiguity of purpose being recognised as the normal state of affairs military, away from the battle area, these virtues are taken as signs of health in the vast organization of the army; and even the rank and file accept them as such. Subconsciously the troops standing in the shed adopt this attitude while they wait.
There is a stir ahead where other troops are being allotted

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space. Officers notice this: They hasten to other officers of higher rank, they salute, they seek information, they return to their places Something has been learned that confounds the little already known. In sheer desperation of ever discovering what to do, a decision, calculated to be on the safe side, is made and acted upon. The troops are moved somewhat further forward and an order is given, an order that every man has been wishing for.
"Mark time in front!"
"Halt!"
"Into line! - Right Turn!"
"Right Dress!"
 "Stand at Ease!"
"Take off Packs!"
"Dress packs in line!"
"Troops may be easy and sit down!"
The final command is obeyed with a willingness that proves how wonderful is the discipline

[Page 81]
4.
of an army. The Australian being a perfect soldier, wishing to excel in attention to even the simplest thing expected of him, not only sits down but lies down at full length.
The greater number of the Sappers are doing that now with the result that there is a sprawling mass of Khaki covering an extensive area of the floor, like a mossy growth suddenly produced by a miracle. And now there many of those men fast asleep with their heads on their on their packs.
Early rising and a long railway journey have brought a healthy weariness to body and limb for which sleep is the only balm.
A number of the men, who may have snatched twenty winks in the train and some who are of the active minded variety who never sleep in the daytime, are seated on their packs writing letters to Australia that their people may learn of the departure for France.

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Six of the most wide awake are seated or reclining in a circle and are playing at cards. They are good companions and good sports and are becoming the centre of a group of ‘Tommies’ which increases every minute or so as a passing ‘Chum’ halts there in amazed curiosity. Several Cockney lads are there looking over the shoulders of their pals at the six little heaps of silver and notes that the care-free Australians seem to regard so carelessly. There is something betwixt envy and wonder in the faces of those absorbed onlookers. Very few words are spoken by the card-players as they loll amongst their packs and equipment and handle their cards like a gathering of friendly Sultans. Six spiral columns of blue smoke rise from pipes and cigarettes to mingle in a cloud above the heads of the Tommies. The flutter and flick

[Page 83]
6.
of cards, and the clinking of coin is plainly audible as the game proceeds.
Far down where perspective reduces everything to lilliputian dimensions something resembling a tawny serpent is entering the shed to the sound of marching feet. Sharp orders can be heard down there. The serpent turns and turns again, draws nearer, increases in size, begins to look like men crowded together, assumes a straight formation, becomes still, then at the conclusion of an order it melts to the floor, a Khaki mass that melds instantly to a similar mass already there.
Incidents of this nature continue to occur till the wide acres of the floor are almost wholly occupied by tired soldiers resting as easy as it is possible to be.
Here all are British but many are of the English army and only a portion are of the A.I.F.

[Page 84]
7.
Here are various drafts for British regiments, companies of R.T.A. companies of Australian T.A. and drafts for the reinforcement of Australian Engineers.
This resting of so many soldiers prone at ease has the appearance of an army overcome by some mysterious spell before it has met the enemy in action. Such impression, however, is marred by the presence of those restless spirits who are to be found in all large gatherings of men, individuals who can never be still when there is much waiting to be endured, but who must be wandering about to kill time. There are a number of such men here moving up and down on the outskirts of the reclining masses.
The R.T.O. a kindly old veteran with a stoop in his neck as though the military yoke had been a heavy burden there for many years, drifts about

[Page 85]
8.
with a sheaf of papers in his hand and a look of gentle purpose on his face.
Rest seems to be the need of the majority of the men here, especially of the Australians who have had a long spell in a bone rattling train and have seen all they care to see for the day. As a rule they potter about and dig up whatever interest a place may be capable of producing but now hardly a man of even the wakeful amongst them is interested in anything. Scarcely a man of them lifts his head to gaze at the spectacle of two German officers being brought along by an armed escort from a more forward part of the dock, or at the batch of German Red Cross prisoners following in their wake.
There is one Australian, however, who looks on and who in spite of all that he has previously seen of the German soldier mentally notes new impressions. No doubt

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he is biased by racial prejudice as he imagines he discovers in the German a distinctive type of human being. To him the Teutonic head appears to be of a bullet-like roundness with the rear part of the crown flattened at an angle indicating the lack of a sensitive conscience, the eyes hard and merciless and without the light of imagination, and the general expression of the face suggesting a forced over-evaluation of scientific fact and a stern divorcement of those higher spiritual qualities by which the nobility of a nation may be assessed.
Most of the English soldiers here are young men, many of them mere lads who have not yet faced the enemy. They display much interest in the German Prisoners, noting their uniforms of green-grey with red pipings, their red banded caps and their crown-

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embossed buttons.
Outside, in the open, the wharf is a narrow strip of space between a wall of sheds on one side and a leaning wall of high-floating ships on the other.
Over-head, on slender structures of steel, are travelling cranes like huge spiders in strong webs. They creep aloft up there with some little clatter and fuss as, with extreme ease, they perform such herculean feats as hoisting fully loaded motor waggons from the wharf to the decks of troop ships.
In addition to these waggons being taken aboard there are a thousand and one suspended objects ascending in that canyon-like space between the ships and the sheds. Some are slings loaded with boxes of ammunition, with cases of bully-beef, with tins of biscuits and a variety of war materials such as barbed wire

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and timber and hessian.
In a shed adjoining that where the troops are resting there are hundreds of horses that have been hurridly brought from the country by train this morning.
They are to be shipped to France being required by the Army almost as much as human beings.
They are wanted for the guns, for general service, for the Red Cross, for [indecipherable] transport and for officers.
Without them it would be impossible for the army to maintain its most vital communications in the danger zone. Many of them will replace others that have done their duty nobly and have gone west.
In the days of peace these patient creatures had well nigh been forgotten by man but now that it is war they are dragged into the shambles to aid that superior and overmastering being who, while scornfully declaring them

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to be soulless brutes, would prove himself alone to be soul-worthy and the nearest unto God, by taking up the sword and tramping the pearls of culture in the mire while he drenches the very world in blood.
Here not only are there horses awaiting transport to the battle field but also mules. These animals seem to know that they are regarded by men especially men of the army, as bastards. They have the forlorn appearance of being discarded children that have never known the graciousness of love or sympathy, and in a long endurance of the vicissitudes of neglect have grown indifferent to every circumstance of life, heeding neither joy nor sorrow.
They take no pride in being troublesome but they persist in maintaining both of

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these traits of character with great energy in the first and extreme stubbornness in the second. They never show a sign of despair nor yet of hope. They suffer with the calm forbearance of a rock. They face the dangers of battle, and toil into the very jaws of death with the same uninterested complacence with which they drag themselves to their feed boxes. They are they only optimistic pessimists in the whole of creation.
Out on the wharf further forward are a number of disabled guns just landed by a transport from France. Here are guns of all sizes and descriptions, also gun carriages, gun wheels, gun parts. Guns that have been over yonder doing their bit and have been put out of commission by the enemy and are now back as hospital cases in Blighty. One has a breech that cannot be opened on account of a lucky hit to the

[Page 91]
14.
credit of the Hun: the solid gunmetal of its block is rendered a shapeless mass, as though it had been kneaded as easily as dough. A light field gun is here with its carriage an absolute wreck and its bullet-proof shield crumpled- up and torn like brown paper. There are many guns of the same class here, all of them damaged, more or less, in a like manner. Here there are also lumbering carriages of heavy guns, battered and bent and perforated and with every vital part of their construction thrown out of adjustment and apparently beyond all hope of repair. Here is a high-sided truck full of gun barrels damaged by German shell-fire.
The overmastering forces of terrific explosions with the frightful hurtling of missiles and shards that attend them have cut inches deep into solid metal

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15.
and have cleaved and torn asunder massive plates and heavy assembled parts of these monstrous instruments of war as though such wonderfully conceived and highly wrought work of mans imperious mind and cunning hand had no more strength than the fragile toys of children. Such destruction is from the batteries of the enemy therefor it is the work of man also and must be accepted as the fortune of war, but not without the hope that the enemy guns have suffered in a like manner from our own.
All this broken armament has come from France just as it had been when on the battle field, in the grotesque gaiety of its painted camouflage. The gun barrels with their patches of heterogeneous color have a weird reptilian appearance, and the flat surfaces of bullet shields and other parts resemble the

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varigated foliage of stage scenery.
It is impossible to review the destruction done to these ponderous pieces of artillery without a thought of the gunners who may have manned them at the moments of disaster. In most cases annihilation must have been their fate.
It is also impossible to look upon them and believe that they can be repaired and rendered fit for further service. However that this can be done there is ample proof close at hand for here one of the wharf sheds has been commandeered by the military and is converted into a workshop replete with lathes, steam hammers and all the complicated machinery and tools and power necessary for such work. Trained Engineers with experienced mechanics and fitters directed by Military Experts are here attending to the shattered cannon very much in the

[Page 94]
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same way as doctors to wounded men in a hospital. There are guns here already healed of their wounds and refurbished and adjusted of their parts.
These are awaiting transport to France that they might once more bark defiance and hurl death into the ranks of the enemy.
One of the troopships, a section of the leaning wall that towers along the wharf, has been swallowing everything that comes to it and is still ravenous for more. The cranes seem to despair of ever filling the monster to repletion: they have endeavouring to do so for many hours and are now so weary of the hopeless task that they appear to have fallen asleep while still on the move.
The day passes with intense activity on the narrow wharf while in the shed where the troops are resting there is enforced

[Page 95]
18.
idleness.
Now it is late in the evening. An order is given for the troops to embark. There is at once movement and bustle everywhere.
Everybody is busy enough in getting everything aboard but there is none of the fuss or excitement that made the embarkation of troops hysterical events in the fierce heart throbbing days of the commencement of the war.
The grey ship, still swallowing at countless slings of baggage and provisions that continue to sway and dangle about its bulwarks like so many spiders dropped from a tangled web above, is also gobbling two serpent-like monsters of animated Khaki that officers have induced to crawl up its steep gangways. It continues to do this with the inappeasable hunger of a stunned leviathan until all

[Page 96]
19.
that it has to convey to France has been consumed

[Page 97]
1
After having survived, for many weeks, the mental torments and escaped the physical agonies of that hell-on-earth, the front-line trenches, the soldier who is rewarded with a spell of rest in a region of peace far behind the guns is blessed with a rare experience. This becomes clear on stating that it is only then that mortal intelligence is capable of realizing what might be the exaltation and gratitude of a soul that reaches heaven.
In a sub-conscious way the truth of this has been felt by thousands of men when, with the thunder of bombardment still rumbling in the memory of their ears, they have been transported from the horror and devastation of the battlefield to the undefiled beauty and calm where war is not.
In such a part of France, at the present moment, there are several of the smaller units of a tired army. One of these is quartered in a pleasant village at the back of which, after a somewhat abrupt

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2
rise in the ground, stretches a wide extent of splendid agricultural country, and in front of which is spread a rich low-land veined with canals till at a further distance it changes to a slumbering area of marsh-land skirting a river that lies remote and out of sight.
The village itself and its every surrounding view possesses the placid beauty of a picture. It is here that the soldier, not yet recovered from his war-weariness and with his brain-vision not yet completely erased of its vivid impressions of the [indecipherable] shell-pocked desolation of wars terrene, looks around with the sensation that he is nothing more than a poor half animated fact moving wistfully and doubtfully through the enchanted fabric of a dream. It is here that the trees are covered with a magical foliage and are so unscathed that they seem to be unreal: not a leaf is frayed, branch broken, [indecipherable] or root upwrenched from the earth. It is here that a field lies open to the sky like a hallowed carpet of emerald velvet, its

[Page 99]
3.
smooth and restful sward a wonderous sight to behold being, as it is, without the slashing wound of a trench, the wrinkle of a parapet, the crater of a shell. It is here that a Peasants cottage snuggles in the friendly [indecipherable] of a sheltering copse, against the dark green of which a tranquil thread of smoke, almost as blue as the sky and as airy as gossamer, rises from a chimney that squats in the homely thatch of its roof like a weary friend content and at rest: not a brick has been shattered from the chimney nor a whisp of straw torn from the roof. It is here that the rich mans chateau stands stately and serene in its splendid grounds, with sunlight lending glory to its casements, quickening to fire the crimson of its climbing roses and re-furbishing with beams of gold the false gilt of vanity that makes tawdry the ostentatiously- open ironwork of the gate that airily screens its pretentious affluence from the poor: not a single pane is broken in the casements, not a scroll of the wrought artistry is smashed or distorted of its [syminetry?]
  
a name="a4990100">

[Page 100]
4.
It is here, in the village and as far as the soldier may wander in the panorama of beauty in which it is circumscribed, that everything built by man is intact and everything that Nature, with the mystery of her seed, has has invoked from the soil is unharmed and complete. It is here that there seems to be an unseen caressing presence of solicitude and protection, and indeed there is – the presence of Peace
It is in such a region that the Soldier with battered and sundered faculties slowly mending and re-uniting to the calm and reason of a faith that had well-nigh been wrestled from him, is gradually re-discovering a lost world and once more becoming conscious of the existence of a benign and merciful God.
A lazy canal forces its way through the lower portion of the village: Here do sleepy barges glide with just enough disturbance of the smooth water to break up the inverted pictures of the trees and sky that are painted there in counterfeit of Natures

[Page 101]
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more splendid pictures on either side.
Upon this canal it is not unusual to see a barge that is a home as well as a produce transport; a floating home occupied by a married couple who have with them their children, their dog, their cat and their clothes lines.
The soldier looking on, beholds such a barge with wondering eyes for to him it is almost inconceivable that there should be on earth a life so placid and so free from dread alarms: He pictures the little family gliding day after day through slowly changing scenes of pasture lands and woods where there is for ever the compassion of Peace.
The canal waters are a flood of flowing sleep surcharged with dreams. Only where the locks are and the overflows do they waken and become turbulent but not for long for soon the bulrushes in the lower levels hush them to sleep again. The barge that is against the flow is drawn by horses that move on the tow path as though they were creatures not yet aroused

[Page 102]
6.
from slumber or had fallen to sleep through the slowness of their task.
The soldier who is here for a rest enjoys the vast tranquillity of the place and regains his interest in the amenities of civil life. In the village he finds that humanity, in the process of enduring existence, is much the same as elsewhere in the world. The urchin sends forth his little paper ship in the gutter, the schoolboy idles his time shreading the head of a bulrush to fluff, the old man works at his basket-making until it is too dark to see, the poor man, laboring at the building of a brick wall, smiles while earning a niggard wage, the man of wealth and property is worried throughout the day because a drunken soldier has broken a pane of glass in the window of one of his numerous tenements, the housewife toils incessantly, the newspaper arrives, it is eagerly read, the latest phases of the war are discussed, and peace, up in the trenches, where the resting soldier has so recently been, is longed for by all.

[Page 103]
1.
First impressions &
thoughts on Active Service
Trench Warfare
Soldiers just withdrawn from the front are resting in a village. Amongst them is one who thinks back and endeavours to arrange in some sort of order the chaos of mental impressions that were stamped, in over-lapping succession, on his brain when at the front.
It is impossible for him to assort, in their correct sequence, his fragmentary recollections of events that happened.
It is almost impossible to put in words, for the understanding of others, even the little that remains coherent in his own senses. He has learned that life is not lived in days nor yet in years but only in moments. He has learned that the living of life even in those moments has been the most sublime when nearest to death.

[Page 104]
2
There is no interchange of thought between human beings to convey from one to another the peculiar effervescing elation of those brief periods of existence
They are the outcome of the fateful knowledge possessed by man that he lives in a house of perishable stuff and of knowledge also that his duty has placed him where he is exposed to the murderous and overmastering forces that may, in the twinkling of an eye annihilate that house.
Such forces are the terrific explosions of shells and of bombs, the rain of shrapnel, the deadly stream of machine gun bullets, and the bursting of secret delayed action mines, to say but little of the sudden approach of overwhelming fumes from poison gas.
To face such as these with the mind terrified yet sane, and

[Page 105]
3
to attempt the duty that is expected of a man without turning away to seek shelter for the frail house of flesh in which he lives, and to be fortunate enough to exist in the midst of such merciless powers and their terrific detonations is indeed to live even if it be as an humble centre of agony and apprehension.
The instant of coming through those moments unscathed is one of supreme elation, but it is never without the realization that Providence or Chance or Good Luck or whatever there might be has stood close by with a God-permitted favour in one hand and in the other a scroll whereon is writ a part to be played in a numbered act at some unknown allotted time.
These Moments are, however too intense, to be borne repeatedly for any lengthy period with

[Page 106]
4
the mind, that is tuned for a normal state and an even stress, remaining balanced and sane.
Some men may come through safely and strong of nerve many times where Deaths cold finger has almost chilled their blood but a time comes to even those when they can stand no more and are brought at last to the bravery of admitting their fear, and dare not again face the terrors that they had endured.
The war as it is fought proves that the fiendish inventions of mans cunning to annihilate man are so terrifically shocking in their stupendous mechanical might against the frail and sensitive creature that he is himself that however he may with his reason and will power strive to endure them the nerves of his physical being must subconsciously suffer and for a generation or more seriously

[Page 107]
5
retard the sane and healthy development of a nation.
This result of modern war alone should be enough to set wise men, possessing minds above the brute, busy in the search of some influence by which commercial [amenities?] might be fostered and maintained and war thereby averted.
There are various other results of modern war that are perhaps as far reaching with harm extending through many years of time but these are of a less vital nature and may be lived through with less detriment to the race.
It is astonishing that man with the intellect to rise to the pinnacale of culture that has been attained should still remain at heart a savage and debase that intellect by applying it with feverish energy to the invention and the manufacture of monstrous

[Page 108]
6
machines and engines for the destruction of man.
At this particular stage of the worlds enlightenment and wonderful progress in science and art it would seem that there would be no need for war.
However it still obtains and nations play at it as the greatest of all games being as it is a game of blood.
Right through the ages the spilling of blood has been the game of nations and of Kings, the game of savages and of jakals, of godless murderers; of fanatical priests.
The spectacle of blood-spilling has been an entertainment in many lands throughout history.
Even in modern peace time the exhibition of two men drawing blood from each others noses is a delight to thousands of men and women who are willing

[Page 109]
7
to pay excessively for the engrossing entertainment.
How then, can it be expected that man will cease to go to war?
The outstanding feature in modern war is as ridiculous as it is terrible. It would be laughable if it were not so murderous.
It is that man has to fight through a hell of terrific forces of nature that have been harnessed by the intellect of science and loosened at will before he is even in sight of his enemy.
The conditions are the same for both armies in conflict and they are unnecessarily expensive beyond all reason and exceedingly foolish when it is considered that were the opposing forces to meet together in the old pre-historic style with club and stone axe

[Page 110]
8.
the killing could be done with greater ease and with infinitely less expense.
This war proves that bombardment by modern artillery is so terrifically murderous and over whelming that nothing living can face it and exist, nor yet the builded works of men withstand the onslaught of its devastating forces and remain intact.
Whole villages of brick and stone buildings are shattered and wrecked and smashed till they lay flattened to heaps of spalls and splinters and dust. The trees of shady forest, of copse, of village street and of country highway are stripped and riven and broken into matchwood. The gardens and fields, in areas of hundreds of acres, are torn and ploughed and pitted till every vestige of cultivation is obliterated in a vast gun-wrought desolation.
Acres and acres of the soil that had yielded its wealth and beauty to the toiling Peasant is so belabored by bombardment that the craters formed by shell explosions intersect

[Page 111]
9
each other leaving scarcely a sod with a living blade of grass between them. The general appearance imparted to the land by this wide-spread pocking and upheaval suggests the visitation of some ill curse of colossal magnitude.
Up at the lurid front of raging conflict there is at this moment a sector of the battle-field where several still-rooted trunks of trees splintered and riven, stand the most conspicuous amongst the few remaining indications of a village that had been but is now no more. It is difficult to believe that a large community of simple Peasants, comfortably housed, once dwelt there in peace.
Somewhat apart from the village site, in staggering pose, is all that remains of a solitary tree less shattered than the others but perhaps a more hopeless spectacle being as it is as naked as a skeleton and with broken branches like

[Page 112]
10
the stumps of a wounded mans severed arms raised in vain supplication to heaven for war to cease.
Where the village was there is hardly a stone left standing on another. A hewn doorstep firmly embedded in the ground, once a threshold trodden by homely feet, is all that marks the site of a demolished cottage. Several deep wells, gaping to the sky, locate the positions of so many plots where other homes had been. In these wells lurk affrighted frogs that have ceased to croak since hearing the mighty croaking of the guns. Broken bricks and tiles and shards of shattered pottery litter the soil and lie interstrewn with splintered wreckage of farm waggons, rusted ploughs, hay rakes and various other implements and tools of a Peasant people. The whole surrounding area of the village site is a vast waste of broken earth where shell holes are so

[Page 113]
11
numerous that there remains no space for another to be formed in isolation and where trenches and battered parapets slash and rib their way in serpentine confusion.
Parts of broken rifles and tattered portions of equipment lie half embedded in parapets and in the trenches. Sharp and jagged shards of iron shells, some covered in rust, are scattered everywhere. Unexploded eighty-pound shells rest serenely in shell hole and on parapet, as also do many hand-grenades and bombs that have failed to detonate. Clips of unused rifle ammunition lie trodden in the clay. Broken ammunition limbers and Field Cookers half buried in shell holes are to be seen here and there.
Corkscrew standards for wire entanglements, barbed wire, telephone wire and the debris of many things wrecked by
 
a name="a4990114">

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12
bombardment litter the shell-pocked desolation and tangle thickly in various places.
Wooden crosses, many of them crudly and hastily made, mark where soldiers lie buried in the forlorn field. The booted feet of a dead man protruding from a heap of earth accidentally mark a grave that has no cross. Gilded flies in a jewel-like cluster lead the sight to where the shoulder bones of a hastily buried soldier are exposed. Not far away where droops the single bloom of a blood-red poppy there stands a cross whereon is written with the purple of an indelible pencil "Here lies a soldier unknown."
A white butterfly flitting near like the ghost of a holy thought rests on the poppy for a moment and then, in the fickle way of beautiful things, departs to poise a while on the stinging nettle growing rank and tall through

[Page 115]
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a rusted coil of barbed wire lying on the ground like a crown of thorns, and soon the wayward creature flits once more and is gone
A brown sparrow searches for the eaves of a cottage that ceases to exist till in despair it flies to the ghostly stump of a tree and perches there as still and as silent as a little image carved in wood.
A party of Sappers are repairing a shell-battered and broken road in the devastated land that guns and ammunition may be taken closer to the enemy. They laugh and curse and joke as they work for today they live, and life so close to death has every right and reason not to be sad. They gather bricks and stones from the flattened heap of debris that was once a village, avoiding little mounds that cover dead men there.
Hidden guns, many in cunningly

[Page 116]
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contrived emplacements are roaring and barking wrathfully as though they were monstrous unearthly creatures conscious of the fact that they are hurling into the enemys lines their death-dealing missiles. The clamour they make is deafening to the ear.
So rapid is the firing and so numerous the shells fired that the sound they make in the air resembles the flowing of unseen streams of water and the tearing of invisible ribbons.
Many of the guns are within a few paces of the road-menders: they are screened overhead with artificial foliage made of wire-netting and tags of hessian dyed green in imitation of leaves.
Beneath these screens the gunners are visible toiling at their grim duties more like fiends than human beings.
Although the enemy has been trying to silence these guns

[Page 117]
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he has not yet scored a hit. Now and then, however he gets mighty close to one of them. His shells occasionally fall into the powdered remains of the village re-wrecking ruin and dislodging the buried dead.
The great sun regardless of mans bitter contention and foolish strife floods the haggard face of the earth laid waste by war with soft glory.
A bee worries a homeless daisy that has managed with its tender roots to hold its place in the soil and bloom in the protecting shadow of a stone.
A snail marks in silver her traverse across the shard of an exploded shell and seeks patiently for some green blade or leaf.
A wasp builds her nursery of mud in the battered remains of a gun carriage. A dead mans withered hand protruding from the sunbaked clay of a parapet is

[Page 118]
16
gnawed by a rat
Thus in the field of war where there is death Nature insists with her eternal will that life shall still abide.

[Page 119]
Australians in Ypres under Bombardment
(Gunfire).
[Find?] description of Troops & horse & mule drawn equipment moving forward in pitch darkness
Mention of 27th Battalion ’going in’ in utter darkness

[Page 120]
1.
Oct 1916
We, a group of not more than half-a-dozen soldiers, are wandering curiously in Ypres, the bombarded city of Belgium. Here there are hundreds of men of the Australian forces hidden in the ruins. We are under cover of the merciful darkness of night.
There is not a spark or a glimmer of light to be seen. This complete darkness is jealously maintained, for in the sky is heard the death-threatening churn of an aeroplane, and we know the soaring eyes of the enemy are above us.
Light means death, or, rather, a greater certainty of death than darkness.
The beams of a candle are enough to define to a bomber overhead the exact location of a camp in the ruins below. Darkness is the only safety but it is not absolute safety, for bombs may be dropped at random with the chance of doing terrific slaughter. The hazard, however is an expensive

[Page 121]
2
indulgence for the enemy who therefore is ever on the watch for an unprotected light by which he might direct his aim.
The night is dark but dark as it is the sky contrasts with the objects of the earth in a definite manner as though it were beaten out of dull silver to [indecipherable] a world of broken ebony. It is against the silver of the sky that there is to be seen jagged upright shapes of masonry, great leaning fragments of brickwork, heavy masses of tottering roofs and wild tracery of broken timbers.
This at night is all that is visible of what was the city of Ypres; a spectacle that might well be imagined to represent primitive and colossal headstones and tombs of a giants graveyard. From the skyline downwards these shapes gradually lose their outlines in a gathering of shadows that huddle closer and closer till at the earth all becomes a spreaded blot as black as ink.

[Page 122]
3
So black and impenetrable indeed is the terrestrial darkness that the foot almost falters as though in fear of the solid being dissolved to gloom.
It chances that we who wander in company come to a halt in the flood of darkness, each knowing of the others presence only by touching with the silent stretching forth of a hand. We are at a corner where the main highway, a little further beyond, enters the wide opening of the city square. An intersecting street winds from the point where we stand [indecipherable] through the ruins towards the great gate in the medieval wall that guards the city on the quarter against which our backs are turned.
Slightly to the left of our front, on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, are the ruins of the famous Cloth Hall and of the stately Cathedral.
Flash! - Flash! – Bang! –Cr rack!
Two of our guns have fired from their debris-covered concealments
  [ ] emplacements

[Page 123]
4
on the other side of the cathedral.
The pink and vermilion of their flashes reflected on the masses of broken walls forms a vivid background to sombre skeletons of ruin in front that seems to leap from the darkness into momentary existence. From these two guns the shells surge through the air above us on their way towards the enemy with sounds that can well be imagined to be narrow streams of water flowing swiftly in space. Again there is darkness where the flashes had been. Again there is the massed blackness of the ruins with the towering fragments alone visible that rise against the silver of the sky.
Flash, Flash, Flash, Bang, Crack Crack
Other hidden guns have fired
Again there is a vivid background of pink and vermilion but brighter than before. Again the leaping forth of skeletons of ruin.
And then comes the swallowing

[Page 124]
5
darkness and the tall ragged shapes against the sky. And again the surging as of water through the air.
A whine like the mingling of agony and anger screamed at the highest pitch comes towards us in the sky and changes as it speeds overhead until the sound resembles a whistling hiss as though from the tightened teeth of revenge. It is a shell from the enemy sent to slay and to further wreck the irreparable ruin that is here. We listen and we watch with eyes strained in the darkness for we know there will be a hell-like flash and a nerve racking explosion somewhere in the city, and we are anxious to locate it when it happens.
Flash and flare of gold and crimson away ahead of us. Bang Crrr-rup
Ping-g-g-gee Whiz-z-z.
We hear and we see, and from our knowledge of the ruins we

[Page 125]
6
try to judge exactly where the shell has spent its fury.
The flare is half-left from where we stand but the distance is hard to guess
Crash--- Boom ---. It is only the fall of brickwork -- a wall brought down by the explosion.
Such an event gives us no concern for it occurs so often. Suddenly, however, there comes to the mind of each of us a fear that our twelve inch gun has fallen a victim to the blasted shell. We all know that it must be somewhere about where the shell exploded. Some of us had that morning seen seen the monster snuggling grimly beneath a flimsy covering of splintered timbers and ragged hessian dragged from surrounding wreckage to camaflage its position.
If the shell has had the devilish luck to find the old warrior, -- well --it is but the fortune of war
The gold and vermillion of the

[Page 126]
7
exploding flash is still on our eyeballs as we try again to fix the location. Our fears are thrown aside. We persuade ourselves that the German shell has struck a wall somewhat to the left and beyond the gun. She will bark as usual at daylight and hurl her mighty missile towards the enemy.
The sound of treading feet comes to our ears. We listen into the darkness. We hear men marching we hear the clear clomp of horses hoofs, the clonk of wagon wheels, the grinding crush of their steel tyres on the hardness and grit of the road. We hear the distinct jewel-like clink of the chains, the creak and squeeze of leather, the shuffle wheeze, and wobble of baggage, the sharp clash of metal, the tread of feet, the tramp of feet, the shuffle and drag of feet. We hear the snort of a horse, the weird complaint of a mule, a half laugh of the human voice, a muttered curse.

[Page 127]
8
All these sounds come to our ears, each distinct and clear at times but always through a ceaseless rumbling concert from them all.
The clomping marching rumble clatters and loudens and the darkness immediately in front of us thickens and begins to move. We are conscious of a changing rugged outline, a phantasmagorid of gloom darker than than the darkness. Bulging masses linked together by low ribbon-like stretches creep past us and vanish as similar masses follow in their wake link after link. A dragon of shadow accompanied by the clomping rumble and the treading of feet is entering the city.
From the unseen curb of the narrow footway on which we stand we put forth our hands plunging the darkness. We reach the moving shadows. We touch the bulging baggage of a wagon, the cold side of a limber. We feel the steamy breath of a horse, the flapping
 
a name="a4990128">

[Page 128]
9.
coat of a soldier, the equipment of another. We dimly see that the lower stretches of a shadow are bristling with sloping thickets of rifles. We see the head of a horse, the outline of a rider, the edges of a thousand shapes that are familiar to our sight.
By reflection of the silvery sky overhead we can see the crown of a steel helmet. A spark flashes from an iron-shod hoof. We can see the legs of a horse, dangling harness the spokes of a wheel.
All that we hear and the little that we touch and see is enough to inform us that a battalion is marching into the bombarded city under cover of darkness. This stealing in at night is a military necessity for every move in the game of war is to avoid death that death may be dealt. No man in that night-protected battalion is allowed to strike a match; no man attempts to.

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"Halt" comes a stern but muffled command. The head of the shadow-dragon somewhere forward in the darkness ceases to move.
The command passes, in quietly uttered repetition, towards the rear as the shadow wrinkles on itself while slowly understanding what would be instantly realized in broad daylight.
The whole column loses its spaces and is crushed up and close packed.
Mules raise their heads to avoid baggage in front of them, waggons and horses become a jumble, men cramp and wedge together to give the transport room and to avoid the hoofs of frightened animals.
The officer in charge is doubtful of the way.
We become conscious of this by hearing him ask a question of discussing the matter with someone as unseen as himself.
"Where do you want to get to?"
This question is put by us.
"Road leading to Tylle gate," comes

[Page 130]
11.
the answer.
"You are almost in it. Turn to the right and you’re there" one of us declares.
"Good! And thank you lad whoever you are," comes a soldiers gratitude for the timely information
The column is put in motion again and slowly assuming its easy links of space rids itself of cramps and wrinkles and becomes once more a dragon of shadow
"Who are you?" We ask
The twenty seventh Battalion" the dragon replies.
"Going in?" we enquire
"Yes! Going in." comes the answer.
We know what that means and as we watch the moving darkness drag past us and vanish in the blackness of the ruins we wonder how many men of that battalion will have the good luck to come out.

[Page 131]
The 6th of September was a grey showery day in Ypres.
Hilton had a slack time at plan work but he found plenty to do,in working with other sappers at improving in other directions. Part of his time was consumed in assisting other sappers in building extra sand-bag protection to the Cupola Huts.
The drizzle of rain added wretchedness to the desolation of ruin. The chaotic noise of guns firing, and of shells [whining?] and bursting and of the crash of tumbling walls smitten walls crashing was continuous throughout the day
Later in the evening Hilton wandered alone through part of the ruins. The weather was no longer grey and showery then. The sky had cleared and become as a placid sea of azure with immense outwelling [indecipherable]
clouds calmly drifting across like

[Page 132]
mighty ships [indecipherable] [rendered?] majestic in the billowy beauty of wind blown sails

[Page 133]
(1)
The 6th of September was for the most part a grey and showery day in Ypres.
Hilton had a slack time at plan work but he found plenty to do in other directions. Part of his time was consumed in assisting a fatigue of sappers in the building of extra sand-bag protection of the cupola huts.
The drizzle of rain added to the wretchedness to the ruinous [indecipherable].
The chaotic noise of guns firing, of shells howling and exploding and of smitten walls crashing was continuous throughout the day
Late in the evening Hilton wandered alone to revisit certain places in the ruins where he had been twelve months earlier. The weather then was no longer grey and wet. The sky had cleared and had become as a placid sea of azure with immense outswelling clouds, enriched with gold

[Page 134]
(2)
and copper light, calmly drifting across, like mighty ships rendered majestic in the billowy beauty of wind-blown sails.

[Page 135]
1.
No sooner is the dragon-like shadow, that we now know to be the Twenty-Seventh Battalion, lost to us in the night than we are moved with a desire to gather whatever news it may bring from other sectors of the front.
Stepping into the inky flood, that the roadway seems to be, we move hastily along and reaching the tail of the shadow melt into it, knowing that we are there only by feeling the shoulders of marching men against our own.
"Where have you come from?" we ask
"From the huts down there by the Engineers Saw Mill." a voice replies
"About five miles back," another voice explains.
"But we came from the Somme before that," a third voice declares.
"Was there a chap named Snowy Blackthorn with you?"

[Page 136]
2.
"Yes! He was my mate!" replies a new voice
"Where is he?"
"Under the daisies."
"Ah! He got knocked then?"
"Yes! Poor Bugger"
"Where?"
"In the head. Smashed up, you couldn’t tell it was him!"
"No! But where? What part of the Front?"
"Ah! On the Somme, in Cobber Trench"
"What got him?"
"H.E. Fritz had the range on us and was dropping ’em fair in the trench. I was just next to the poor devil and never got more than a scratch," explains the dead mans mate.
"Was Nugget Williams with you blokes?" enquires one of our party.
"Yes! He got a Blighty," replies someone who had not spoken before.
"True enough, Old Nugget got a Blighty, and good luck to him. I suppose he’s all right by now and doing the heavy with the girls in London. The lucky old devil!" mutters a gruff voice

[Page 137]
3
in a contemplative strain.
"Hope I get a Blighty out of this lot" is the cheery wish expressed by some light-hearted soldier a few yards ahead in the marching crowd
"You! Ginger? Why! You aint got a chance. A blooming ‘Coalbox’ will just send you to glory and your troubles will be over," is the comforting reply from somewhere on the left flank.
"Well! Yes! There’s always that risk" agrees Gingers voice
"No there ain’t Ginger. Not if there’s any dug-outs close handy."
This reflection on Gingers bravery, expressed by a voice with a strong Irish accent, brings forth a retort that written words are too colorless to define.
"Ginger always takes the bait," mutters someone speaking in low tones to someone else alongside him.
"Did you lose many, down there on the Somme?" is a question from one of us
"Yes! A lot of poor Bastards, and

[Page 138]
4
a lot of wounded."
"did you lose any officers?"
"Any! O Good Lord! These blokes up here want to know, did we lose any! officers, Sam!"
"We lost the blooming lot, nearly:
There was Mr Chadwick, he got killed the first going over."
"Yes! And that other bloke, the best of the bunch: What was his name?"
"Manners!"
"Yes! Him, wounded that bad he died the next day."
"That’s true, and the Major, the pluckiest bloke in the Battalion, to give him his due, but a snorter at drill."
"He gave me twenty four blasted days C.B. in Egypt."
"Served you bloody well right!"
"Anyhow he had guts in the firing line."
"Yes! A bloke don’t mind following a chap like him."
Thus in a babel, from many

[Page 139]
5.
men came what might be taken as a reply to our simple question.
"The new Major aint got no nerve, nor guts. He’s a rotter", growls a severe critic.
"He don’t bother much about drill, and all that bloody stuff." Declares a thick greasy voice.
"No! He don’t. But I’ll bet you a fiver to a Fritzs button that he’ll get shell shock this stunt."
The tones of the voices indicate the brewing of an argument but the interest of all concerned is suddenly diverted. The space in the dark street seems to contract. The clattering of wagons, jingling of harness, clomping of horses, tramping of feet and all the other noises of the moving Battalion have increased and a long chain of lumpy shadows is passing by in the opposite direction, but so close that it touches and brushes and is found to be formed of solid horses and men and wagons. It is another

[Page 140]
6
Battalion on the move, a Battalion similar in every respect to that in the tail of which we have become lost and dissolved by gloom.
Masses of standing ruin on either side of the road, perhaps narrower here than elsewhere, help to make the darkness absolute. Every sense except those of touch and hearing have become effete. Unseen baggage brushes baggage, wheel hubs graze wheel hubs, transport drivers lose control of their mules, timid horses become restive, marching men lump together and lose their places, officers ride up and down on the narrow footways cursing and shouting orders.
Each column wrinkles, compresses, brakes and becomes all halts and starts. Above the confusion of a multiplicity of sounds the graphic oaths and profane curses of men, muttered in low but more or less angery voices, becomes a vocal tangle in the black air.
At last two Battalions, with

[Page 141]
opposite directions, seem to fuse to some sort of harmony and to re-establish continuity of progress like opposing streams that have become smooth without ceasing to flow. Order has been restored.
Lurid commands and sharp questions die away. The ingoing stream of shadow enquires of the other:-
"Are you going out?"
"Yes! Going out, thank God"
"Who are you, what Battalion?"
"The twenty fifth"
"Been in the Salient?"
"Too bloody right we have"
"What’s it like?"
"A Bastard"
"As bad as the Somme?"
"No! Not so much bloody bombardment, but the Minnies are rotten cows and the sniping is a bit crook."
"They told us it was a hell to what we had down there"
"No! Dig It’s a picnic to the Somme"
"Good! that`ll do us"
"Keep your eyes skinned for

[Page 142]
8
the sniping. That’s Fritz’s long suit up in the salient"
"Did you lose any men?"
"Had plenty of casualties but not more than about twenty killed."
"Have they blown up Hill 60 yet?"
"No! What are you blokes?"
"The Twenty Seventh"
"From the Somme?"
"Yes!, what’s left of us; and a lot of new Bastards, reinforcements."
"Good Luck!"
"Cheerio"
With these interchanges the two battalions finally pass each other in the darkness and each listens back to the [indecipherable] rumble of the other as though it was but the an echo of its own

[Page 143]
(1)
Rapidly by train we are spirited through the late summer splendour of France.
Gorgeous trees, each one a thing of beauty with its massy foliage of magnificent green, weave forward through the rearward drift of the ceaseless panorama in a perfect waltz of harmonious movement. It seems there’s the spirit of enchantment in the middle distance setting all nature to a stately dance which needs not music.
There are fields of ripening corn of the tint of rich old gold. Then numerous narrow bands, and squares of beets, mangolds, sweeds, red clover, beans and maize. All this with varied repeatition of shape, color, and shade spreads over the swell and dip of graceful undulations in a vast sea of land and resembles a floating mantle of so many ribbands and patches sewn together as one.
Each moment as we speed through the land where it is not yet peace, we

[Page 144]
(2)
draw nearer to the front where it is war.
And though the senses are as it were held in the spell of passive beauty through which we pass; the mind begins to speculate as to what may be up yonder at the charred and raffed end of so fair a scroll.
So with a few of us there are two endless pictures which over-lap and pass and change. One vividly real of its terrible fancies; the other almost as unsubstantial as the fabric of a dream with the intense beauty of its reality and its peace.
In a little while wearied consciousness is wrapped away from the hurts and indignities of a muddy world by the blessed miracle of sleep.
And in another little while a world of oblivion passes, leaving behind it the sweetness of a new born strength, which is another miracle. and one of which the [indecipherable] must marvel ever
Now we are back in the wake of war. At the very spot where nearly twelve months ago it was the very place of war.

[Page 145]
(3)
Ah, then, all those who were not in the war as soldiers, had been hurried back away to the fields and foliage of peace; and with them had passed the civil virtues of the place.
The town was a hollow and deserted labrynth labyrinth of echoing ruin, where only soldiers in their fearless-ness sought to abide.
The air flowed with mingled screams and sighs of evil shells
The very blue of the heavens seemed at times to be torn to ribbands by the swift passing of them.
The terrific bursting of them into a thousand shards, and the ruin and wreck and mortality of their coming, brought fear to the hearts of men, while yet they smiled with a sneer of contempt upon their lips.
Patches of tender grass in the fields vanished in the twinkling of an eye, and the evil game of terror like a giant shrouded in the murk of wickedness belched fury forth from the earth, that death be dealt around. And lo, the fields and the lands, in this wise, had become pocked with deep sunk wounds and black and scorched with fire.

[Page 146]
(4)
Then too had buildings crumpled up in a crash like the fall of childrens toys, and yet men had smiled
Then too was the air, ever like a great unseen giant of friendly sport, buffeting with his hands till irritability came to all, by his ceaseless pranks.
Such was the effect of our own gun fire. But they were grand those guns. They were for ever booming, cracking and roaring with full throated defiance and the splendid dignity which is a lasting [inheritance?] of all canon.
True it is that modern methods of battle compelled them to snuggle under a thicket, in the leafy corner of a cemetery close to the sleeping dead, beneath the debris of a shattered barn; or in the rich foliage of a garden
Or perhaps to plaster their splendid brass and steel of burnished strength with the blackness of slimy sand, and the whiteness of chalk.
Yet in spite of this necessary slinking and hiding, those guns retained their dignity always. And they held their breath in anger whenever the enemy’s
hung over planes hung over.

[Page 147]
(5)
Twelve months ago this was indeed a place of war; and out a few miles yonder, on the ridges, twisted the blood stained line of conflict where all the terrors of battle existed with the intensity of concentration
There in the lurid and angery furnace of a hellish struggle for supremacy, village after village was hammered into dust and swept to the ground
And the ground itself riddled and churned so that even the worm found life to be a state of fear, and knew no state of sanctuary.
The vaultings of dark old cellars were pierced till daylight entered in like a guilty spirit to find that Death had already crept down there where wounded men in his strangling grip were brave unto the end.
Old burial grounds were torn up and broken of their peace. Graves were turned upside down like sods Tombs shattered of their massive stones And skulls of the ancient dead which Peace had laid to rest, were cast up with bones in the sunny beams of [indecipherable] Heaven, and smoke of battle; to been [indecipherable] amongst the spalls of broken monuments where fragments of gilt inscriptions shone and glittered like the tawdry jewels of Vanity.

[Page 148]
(6)
And strangely enough, [afterward?] such scenes of sacrilege, in the very roar of battle, would fall the shadow of the cross; cast by a towering crucifix; Intact, Unblemished, with not so much as a splinter lost from its simple shape of wood, nor a fragment chipped from its metal effigy of the tortured Christ who preached Good will to man and Peace on Earth
Not a stone on stone, nor brick on brick was left.
Land marks were obliterated and lost.
Fields were ploughed and scarified deep with shells and a thousand villainous variations of destruction

[Page 149]
France 23 Oct 1918
If resolutions were not so topply as they generally prove to be, I should probably set for myself the task of writing at least one page per day, as part instalment of a weekly letter.
However anything in the shape of regularity or system is always hateful to me, as being too like uncongenieal duty. Of any just duty I set myself to do, I faithfully perform, But my own [indecipherable] and my thoughts are my own to be unkerbed by set or unfriendly methods.
Each day brings with it so many visions of the yet possible. The might be’s of the future; In spite of the long train of the might have beens

[Page 150]
(2)
which haunt the past like kindly ghosts that smile but never leer
Each day brings its themes of a hundred and one yet unwritten stories and poems, tragedies and drama.
Each day brings its rich discoveries
Each day shows up much beyond the reach, Beyond the [indecipherable] bars.
And each day sweeps away, as litter, into the great valley of forgetfulness and loss; so much of golden worth.
Yet the process of mellow maturity is ceaseless, so there is a value afterall. There is always something to counter despair of man

[Page 151]
(3)
and always something to balance a seeming loss
It is Autumn
The world is a gallery of the seasons pictures
And wonderful pictures they are too
This part of the old globe has an advantage over our Australia in the definite change of its seasons.
How delightfully unlike, are these four children of the year
Time, after all, is a merciful old God.
Always he blesses each year with the four beautiful seasons
That they are so distinctly different seems wonderful.

[Page 152]
(4)
to me.
Walk along the tow path of the sleepy canal with me
"I wish we could" you say So do I.
We both would be less lonely than we are now. Ah yes.
Well let us pretend, like children.
Grownups need not be ashamed of any time to be like children, for after all, children are the best people in the world.
So here we are, on the smooth damp flatness of the tow path with a strip of rich green grass dividing us it from the water which glides without a sound and is almost level with the flatness where we tread.
This water is sombre with shadow and is green and

[Page 153]
(5)
is black and yet is neither.
It flows or glides as it must always onward towards the sea. Yet it is so heavy with sleep that there is not a ripple of laughter to break its smoothness.
It just flows as though it were a flood of dreams
Perhaps it is. If you look across to the wood opposite you almost think it must be
Why? Well because the wood is splendid enough to be part of a dream itself.
From your edge of the dark water, high and thick, towers and recedes the gorgeous wood, like a wall or a tapestry wonderfully painted or wonderfully woven.
It is a rich harmony

[Page 154]
(6)
of amber, old gold, and gold of rich browns and reds, and coppery greens;
The very air which floods into this mass of rich hues is a tinge of color, but it is delicate of the purple grey of mist as though touched-in by a brush dipped into distance.
The whole mass in its gorgeousness is as paint
You feel that you could go over there and touch the canvas of a masterpiece and yet you feel that it might vanish if you did
See now sunbeams are thrust into the [massy?] splendour like golden swords, and there is depth in the color..
Golden butterflies are falling floating through the beams. These are

[Page 155]
(7)
the falling leaves. They fall as nothing else on earth falls except the imitation leaves on the pantomime stage. Many have fallen into the drifting water and are moving down towards the sea in yellow fleets and golden armadas.
Autumn is lavish with her gold She scatters it over the tow-path, over the grass; Everywhere, and casts with it rust and crimson And with it all is the sweet scent of withering glory, unlike any other perfume in nature

[Page 156]
(8)
Everywhere are pictures in rich color and soft haze
The yellows are almost like reflected glows of hidden lights.
With a soldier friend I look over the power house which is built over a branch of the canal, and the machinery of which is driven by

Send
These and notes

[Page 157]
There’s fine dust on the road and a flowering of it on grasses of the wayside and on the leaves of hedges which close in garden plots by cottages of the wayside for it is summer and constant traffic of army transport mills it from the dry hardness of the way.
This dust cloud you completely [indecipherable] in a stifling mist, heavy with stench of horse dung for a moment whenever a motor lorry passes. But soon like the stroke of a great broom the scented breeze of the field sweeps it away and you behold once more the splendid wheat crop heavy in ripening ear pressing close up to the ditch on either side.
They are fine these crops though not extensive. Theres nothing extensive here except one vast extent of of little lands in crops all pressed close together like hundreds of squares and oblongs patches and strips of varied greens and pale ochres, resembling a mantle of patches more than anything else.
No fence lines separate them anywhere They In the distance they might be fabric fragments stitched together so close does one green press to another. There is scarce a [indecipherable] with the joined shades but there is a rich harmony of color and a beauty of variation with respect to harmony.

[Page 158]
"I saw an Aust Soldier cut a finger off a German airman before the poor fellow was dead. He was really dying at the time.
The digger did this to get a diamond ring
Told me by Roy who is reliable [indecipherable] May 19

Australians burying the dead came across a dead German and a dead Australian. The heads had been blown off each body and there was only one head to be found. They buried the bodies in separate graves and they tossed a coin to settle the question as to which grave should have the head.
The Australians [indecipherable] body won the toss

Told by Roy [indecipherable]
Fact

[Page 159]
War Notes

[Sketch]

[Page 160]
(5) (11)
That old cemetery sloped down to the waters edge not long ago, but the Germans lead by the Turks, cut the toe of the slope away to form a road with the result that the gash on the high side of the road reveals bleached bones, and the bank on the low side is made up of tumbled graves and tombstones.
One old tree remains in the roadway holding tightly in its roots a marble tombstone as though determined that the memory of one at least of the disturbed sleepers shall not perish.
Because I have written these words about the old Turkish burial ground don’t think this a gloomy place, for it is not
The water, the hills and the sky make a thousand splendid views of great charm and much poetry. I dont wonder at Byron spending the years here which he did.
The morning views and the evening scenes are splendid. Troy is for ever calling to me to look at this sky or that scene

[Page 161]
(6) (12)
or something
One feels young here and full of energy
I do anyhow
At last I feel my chance has come to make good and I am going to succeed.
Not that I ever doubted myself, for always have I willed that I would do well in the end. Of course my real day is far ahead yet, my very own day, but I can wait knowing it is sure to dawn.
Just now we are busy converting this old fort into a suitable camp, my architectural knowledge and general wide experience of engineering, surveying, and various odds and ends come in well fine. With plenty of local labor at my command I am able to carry on fairly well. Of course we have an interpreter interperater; a man who speaks several tongues.
From now for a few months we will have what they call the bad weather
However that will soon be over. So far the weather

[Diary ends]

[Transcribed by Eric Hetherington for the State Library of New South Wales]