Australian soldiers pass through Ypres with the ruins of the Cloth Hall in the background, 25 October 1917. This photograph by Frank Hurley has become one of the classic images of Australians at Ypres during the Flanders Offensive. For most Australians it would have been difficult to form any opinion of the town for it was simply a pile of rubble, empty of people. Many who passed through Ypres might have echoed the words of British journalist Alfred Gardiner: It is midday as you pass through its [Ypres] streets but there is no moving thing visible among the ruins. The very spirit of loneliness is about you—not the invigorating loneliness of the mountain tops, but the sad loneliness of the grave. (Alfred Gardiner, quoted in Siegfried Debaeke, Ieper: Before, During and After the Great War, Deklaproos, 2006, p. 107. Image: AWM E04612)