Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Mystical & Mysterious

Ailsa has posted some photos of misty, mysterious and mystical forests that stopped her in her tracks:  http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/11/16/travel-theme-mystical/.  She succumbed to the temptation to capture a scene that can’t quite be explained, as did the man behind the camera in Fort Capuzzo, below.

In 1940, when Libya was still an Italian colony,  this frontier fort on the Libyan-Egyptian border was bombarded into the pitiful state you see in the photo below. In 1940 and 1941, Fort Capuzzo changed hands seven times back and forth between the allied and axis forces, finally falling to New Zealand troops who captured it for the last time in November 1941.

In the little grotto, a statue of Mary survived the beatings.  Whether the photographer was Catholic or not, he evidently found her survival mysterious, hard to explain.  So do I.

Fort Capuzzo, Italian Libya, 1941