"11 Oct '17 Railway cutting Broodseinde Ridge 3rd Div. Shell shocked & nerve shattered, the ...

"11 Oct '17 Railway cutting Broodseinde Ridge 3rd Div. Shell shocked & nerve shattered, the living huddle together with the dead, each smoke begrimed & splattered with the sticky clay of Flanders" is what is believed to be the original official photographer's caption before being sent to the censor.
"Wounded soldiers lying along side their dead comrades in the railway Cutting on Broodseinde Ridge, in the Ypres sector, in Belgium, on October 12th, 1917". (This is the caption probably as amended by the censor).
The Australian soldier on the extreme right has later been identified as 1190 Pte Austin Garnet Henderson, 38th Battalion. [added later as there are no names recorded against this caption by May 1919 when the key sheet is returned to the Military History Section in London.
Curatorial note: This is one of two original negatives taken of this scene held by the Australian War Memorial. Both were taken with different cameras; E03864 is a half plate glass negative and E04673 is a nitrate stereo negative (60mmx130mm format). We also hold an image of the right hand side of the stereo pair as E04673A. There are known to be at least two additional versions of this scene, one with Captain Hurley standing on the right and holding a stereo camera, the camera that most likely recorded E04673, and one with Lieutenant Wilkins standing in the same spot and holding the same stereo camera. From the visual evidence, the photographs of Hurley and Wilkins are likely to have been taken with a glass plate camera. Although Captain Frank Hurley has previously been identified as the photographer of E03864, this has now been changed to "unknown", as the evidence of which photographer took which of these images is unclear.
The original caption for E04673 identified these men as 3rd Division soldiers.