'I died in hell, they called it Passchendaele’. A member of the 13th Australian Field Ambulance at Passchendaele in 1917. The stretcher bearer wears a while woollen brassard, lined with white linen with the letters ‘SB’. The bearer’s glassy eyes and slack mouth betray his deadening fatigue - it would have been impossible for him to rest so close to the front with the endless bombardments, constant rain and gnawing anxiety that would have gripped a man in these circumstances. While soldiers in the trenches awaited orders to ‘hop the bags’, the stretcher bearers would be a little further back, trying to be as invisible as possible, because the fighting men often considered them unlucky. Wet weather and sheer exhaustion meant that the Battle of Passchendaele became hopelessly bogged down through October and November 1917. During the five-month campaign, almost half a million men were lost. The fighting cost the Australians 38,000 casualties. Preview soon-to-be-released ‘N...