1940s - Sounds like wish

4 October, 20165 December, 2019

Weekly photo challenge: Nostalgia

Any image of a tram makes me long for the past. When I was a child in Brisbane there were trams in the city, but by 1969 the use and support of trams had declined and the tramway was closed. It had been operating since 1885.

Brisbane tram, 1968, courtesy of Aussie mobs at https://www.flickr.com/photos/hwmobs/10115705345/in/photostream/

(An aside: In case you’re wondering about Vincent’s, they were powders for headaches, wrapped in paper. You poured the powder into your mouth and washed it down with water. My father took them daily. They were withdrawn from the market in the 1970s because they were causing renal failure and codeine addiction. So he shouldn’t have taken them with confidence after all.)

These days in Australia, only Adelaide and Melbourne still have trams. Melbourne is famous for them, and whenever I’m there I catch them just for the fun of it.

When I lived in Lyon, France, I often got around on trams, enjoying the ease of hopping on and off without having to climb stairs or walk down the aisle in search of a seat, as you do on a bus or a train, and without having to descend into the subterranean metro stations.

At present in Canberra, a light rail system (tramway) is under construction, but there’s a heated debate about the expense of it and disputes about the benefits. A local election in a couple of weeks will determine whether the project continues. And if The Opposition wins, it will stop the construction and cancel the contracts for which numbers of people have been employed. Hmmm.

But despite the arguments against our tram project, my nostalgia-filled heart is firing up memories of tram trips taken, of the fun of travelling on these little street trains, of waiting at the tram stops with my mother or father, or by myself in Lyon, holding my ticket nervously purchased in much-practised French, and being transported quickly and efficiently to my destination. So, rationally or not, I’m pro tram.

This 1941 photo of a tram in Port Said, perhaps waiting for the Australian soldiers to jump on board, gives me a little thrill every time I look at it. I wish it could teleport into my life so I could ride on it.

Thanks WordPress for evoking my nostalgia.

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27 August, 2016

Weekly photo challenge: Frame

Two photos from the old war album. The captions are as I found them, written by my father. The photographer is unknown: they might be my father’s photos, or they might have been given to him by a mate.

The “Nile Bridge” is the Abou el Ela Bridge, Cairo – construction completed in 1912, demolished in 1998

Thanks WordPress for prompting me to post photos of framed shots.

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4 July, 20166 December, 2019

Weekly photo challenge: Opposites

A single frame, conflicting elements: small and large, short and tall, thin and fat, man and beast, free and bound…

Voilà. Another photo from my father’s WWII album. This one taken at the Giza Zoo, Cairo (thanks for this info, M. Fakhry).

Elephant and handler, c1941, Giza Zoo, Cairo

Thanks, WordPress photo challenge.

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19 June, 20166 December, 2019

Weekly photo challenge: Curve

This week’s photo prompt, Curve, immediately made me think of the semicircular arches on the Catholic Basilica in Heliopolis, Cairo, or Basilica of the Virgin Mary. I’ve written about it and posted a few photos in other posts, for example here and here and here, but I have a fourth one from a different angle. It’s a church that’s not particularly Roman Catholic in a western European sense, but rather more like the Byzantine basilica, Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, which also has large semicircular arches on its sides, and multiple domes. The Heliopolis basilica is deceptively cake-like in this photo and doesn’t look too monumental, that is, until you look at the little man walking down the road!

Roman Catholic Basilica, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941

I post these images for those who are interested in not-so-ancient Egyptian history; they are from my father’s war album, a collection of photos he took in 1941/42 as well as photos from his mates.

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20 December, 20156 December, 2019

Weekly photo challenge: Gathering

Each time I’ve looked at this photo of Lieutenant-General Thomas Blamey handing out Aquatic Sports Trophies to members of the AIF, I’ve thought I should blog about it. The photo is one of many in my father’s collection that he brought back from the Middle East in 1942, though this one was not taken by him. Similar images of this trophy ceremony in Kantara, on the eastern side of the Suez Canal in Egypt, are available on the the Australian War Memorial site, which suggest that the photo was taken on the same day, 30th August 1941. This week’s WordPress photo challenge, ‘Gathering’, gives me a reason to send it out into the world. I like looking at the individuals in the gathering who are watching Lieutenant-General Blamey giving his speech and congratulating the winners. They’re clapping, smoking and taking photos, but in particular they’re laughing. He must have cracked a good joke!

Later he became Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey, and here in Canberra he has a square named after him, the Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey Square. A mouthful.

Lieutenant-General Thomas Blamey, AIF, August 1941, Kantara, Egypt

Thanks WordPress for the Gathering photo prompt!

6 September, 201511 September, 2017

Weekly photo challenge: Connected

Here’s a direction sign from World War II Libya. The photo taken in about 1941 is in my father’s war album, and is marked as “Signpost Libyan Desert”. The camps are named after Australia’s state capitals, and might have helped the Australian forces to feel (slightly) connected with home, several months’ sail away.

All the capital cities are there except for Hobart. But this board is a palimpsest, a surface where earlier writing has been removed, scraped off, to make way for later writing. Here, the former text has been rubbed or washed away but if you look closely you’ll see the ghosts of smaller words, including the name of Hobart. Whatever happened to Camp Hobart?

There’s also a bit of graffiti on the bottom where a few blokes have scratched their names.

Searching for the locations of the other place names, I learnt that Ikingi Maryût was in the Western Desert outside Alexandria, Egypt, to Libya’s east. But I’m not sure about Abd-el-Kader, though it had been the name of a popular nineteenth-century leader of Algeria, to Libya’s west.

Thanks to WordPress for the photo challenge. See what the word ‘connected’ triggered in others.

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12 July, 201511 September, 2017

Land meets water

Where land meets water in a large city, we build homes and offices for the short walk to the beach and the long view of the open sea. It’s a place to turn our backs on all that disturbs us in society.

For Ailsa’s Land Meets Water photo challenge, here’s a photo of Stanley Bay, Alexandria, Egypt in about 1941. The corniche, the road running round the coastline, was constructed in 1935. The descending levels of concrete bathing cabins added on the shoreline form an amphitheatre that looks onto the Mediterranean. Here in 1941 people are bathing in the sun and sea, and, by all appearances, are unafraid. Yet in May, June and December of that year there had been fierce enemy air and sea attacks on Alexandria with hundreds of people killed and injured. In this scene there are bathers on the sand, in the water and on the rocks, as though all is well.

Today Alexandria is not facing the same threats, but the population has multiplied. Modern photos show the corniche lined with high-rise apartment blocks, not as picturesque as those in the 1940s, and with not nearly as much space to roam between buildings. And town planners seem to have had second thoughts about the bathing boxes, which have disappeared. Only the sea remains the same.

The photo is from my father’s WWII album.

Stanley_Bay_Alexandria — Stanley Bay, Alexandria, Egypt, c1941

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30 May, 20156 December, 2019

Japanese Gardens, Helwan, Cairo

In the 1800s, the town of Helwan was Egypt’s winter resort for the wealthy. During the Second World War, British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers were resident in the area and visited these gardens constructed in 1917 by the architect Zulfiqar Pasha, who gave them a Japanese theme with about forty Buddha statues, elephants, a Japanese-style bridge and pagodas.

After the 1952 revolution the gardens were neglected and Helwan became an industrial area. However, about a decade ago, with help from the Japanese Embassy, they were restored as a Japanese Garden. Once more it has become a desirable escape from the crowds of Cairo. It’s not just tourists who enjoy the space; most Muslim locals also love it as a green oasis amid decrepit concrete buildings, even accepting the novelty of Buddha statues in a Japanese garden, the only one in the Middle East.

In an earlier blog post, I had previously posted the photo of the seated Buddha on a lotus flower and the three elephants, but I deleted it. However, I’m posting it again, because today I was reminded of the value of photos.

When I went searching online for current images of these statues, I found that my photo had been copied before I deleted it, and then it was used to illustrate a couple of stories about the demise of the statues. The Buddha has been beheaded and the elephants de-trunked. What a horrifying discovery! A couple of web sites have stories or brief notes about the destruction, and the authors of these sites have used my photo to show the statues as they were in the 1940s.

My father’s collection of wartime photos is a valuable historical resource, and I’m pleased to be able to share them through this blog. However, it’s disappointing that I received no credit as owner of the photo. Take a look at this Twitter post, for example, and a news site, here, which has put its own name across the bottom of the photo. Please, if you wish to use my photos in your stories, ask me before copying them, and give me credit. Thanks.

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23 April, 20156 December, 2019

Anzac Day 2015

On 25th April it will be 100 years since Australian and New Zealand soldiers charged the beaches in Gallipoli, Turkey, in an attempt to beat the Turks and give the Allies a chance to take Constantinople. They were mown down, slaughtered. The battles continued for months until December 1915 when they withdrew, defeated. Out of a population of less than 5 million, Australia lost 8,000 young males at Gallipoli.

The following year, 1916, my grandfather, Ernest Bruce, joined the army after stowing away on a ship of volunteers headed for Egypt. In July at Pozières, France, on the Western Front, he was trapped under concrete in an explosion, and then gassed. But he survived. He was one of the 40,000 Australians killed or wounded in 1916 on the Western Front (see AWM). That’s a huge part of a population of 5 million.

When he returned to Australia, he was too ill to work for more than a few days a week, yet it took the government years to offer him a pension.

His oldest son was my father, Ronald Bruce, who hadn’t learnt a thing about the futility of volunteering to fight in a war. In 1941 he joined the army, was sent to Egypt, and months later was sent home with shell shock. He couldn’t hold down a job, and at 25 was offered a pension.

This Anzac Day, I honour my father and grandfather for volunteering to participate in Australia’s defence.

Ron Bruce, before leaving for the Middle East, 1941

Ron Bruce, Heliopolis War Cemetery, Cairo, 1941

At the Australian War Memorial in Canberra there is a wall called the Roll of Honour. It’s covered in the names of Australians who have died in war. My grandfather and father are not on the wall because they returned alive; but my grandfather’s three cousins, the Shaw brothers, and my grandmother’s two cousins, the Burley brothers, did not. They are all buried on the Somme in France, and their names are here on the wall. I put poppies beside their names.

Since I learnt that they were all killed while my grandfather returned, I haven’t looked at life the same way.

George Ronald Shaw, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial

D’arcy R. N. Shaw and Frank A. P. Shaw, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial

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15 February, 201511 September, 2017

Weekly photo challenge: Symmetry

I found this photo of the Grand Hotel in my father’s war album, from his time in Egypt in 1941/42 with the AIF. The hotel in central Cairo is part of the Gamalian complex built in 1939, designed by Kamal Ismail. At street level are the hotel foyer and shops, above them is a mezzanine level of offices, and then eight floors of apartments. The complex is an excellent example of stark modernist architecture with its streamlined, symmetrical arrangement of facade details, repetition of balconies, rounded corners, simple balustrades and lack of ornamentation.

On the right and left of the photo where it is out of focus there are small corner balconies on separate buildings, between which there are three pedestrian walkways leading to a central rotunda. The walkways these days are blocked with shops and stalls, but they were designed to allow natural ventilation and illumination between the three parts of the complex, as you can see in the layout plan below the photo.

I found the plan at archnet.org in a very interesting article, “Gamalian: a rediscovery”, about the design and innovations in the complex. The author laments the deterioration of the buildings since their construction in 1939.

Thanks to the Daily Post for this photo challenge.

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