"In your wildest dreams you could not picture the scenes of desolation & destruction throughout this country. Could you for instance imagine the whole city of Auckland with every window minus a single pane of glass, not a roof & not a single wall without indications of shrapnel torn surface, the streets upturned by great shell holes, the furniture of tenements of all conceivable description broken & mixed up into chaotic piles. No scene of abject desolation could be more complete for not a living soul remains."

Extract 2

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"It seems to

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me that under the frightful stress of war if men who are really in the very vortex of death did not joke & make light of it, they would assuredly go mad."