Members of the 1st Australian Infantry Battalion outside their billets

After Herbert Baldwin, Frank Hurley was the next Australian to be appointed an official photographer during the First World War. Hurley spent over three months photographing the Western Front, where he produced some of the finest photographs of his long and illustrious career.
This clearly posed image was probably taken by Hurley on 1 November 1917. Its composition, framed by the building, is typical of many of Hurley’s photographs from the period. The men in the lower right corner are loading Lewis light machine-gun magazines; the 18-pounder shell case hanging from the signal wire would have acted as an alarm.
The billets around the ruined town of Ypres provided Hurley with a moment of respite from the horrors of the battlefront. At Chateau Wood a few days earlier, he had very nearly been hit during an exchange between allied and German forces. This sobering experience lends the strange, battle-scarred architecture of Ypres an ambience Hurley described as both strange and comforting.