Travel with Angela Lansbury: military museum

Showing posts with label military museum. Show all posts

Monday, November 14, 2022

El Alamein museum and cemetery - more to this story - Churchill's quotation

El Alamein in Egypt

Curiosity Satisfied

El Alamein like so many battlefields is a mixture of facts, sadness and happiness. The facts are how the place operated before during and after battles. Facts - The big things such as the tanks. The small things such as the badges.

Emotional Experience

Sadness - people who died. Especially in tragic circumstances. Or if they were your family members.

Happiness, satisfaction, the safety precautions, the ingenuity, that a victory brought an end to the conflict, in that place, for the living, and the dead, on both sides.

Sometimes, reconciliation, between descendants on both sides, or veterans - especially between those who really did not want to be there! Some did not want to kill, some did not want to be killed, some did not understand what they were fighting for, some were homesick.

Sources Of Stories And Quotations

Wikipedia is a wonderful source, a wonderful resource. It started out using and combining the out of date Encyclopedias such as Brittanica, and the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Jewish Encyclopaedia, for all the historical stuff, and early science and culture, gradually adding updates from experts and individuals.

Photo sources

Plus the photos. Now Flickr is just one source of photos. More photos are added directly to Wikipedia by authorities and by members of the public.
El Alamein's Pivotal Part in WW2
My Interest

Wikipedia gave me a succinct guide to El Alamein, updated from when I last looked, with links to all sorts of outside sources. My late mother's first husband was killed at El Alamein which is what sparked my interest in a place I have not yet visited. However, I have visited many WWI and WW2 sites in Europe and the USA's civil war sites. Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, many is a statistic. Often one family member's involvement can inspire a lifelong fascination with everything to do with the whole of WWI, WW2 and wars any time and everywhere. As if somehow, some clue as to how those involved lived and died, how others traced ancestors, it all adds up. We cannot turn back the clock. But we can turn on the clock and create memorials and solve puzzles and mysteries. The past is a jigsaw. Sometimes one piece in the jigsaw is a date, death certificate, or photo, which sends you on a quest to find more pieces to create the full picture.
The two exciting revelations on El Alamein - it was a turning point in the tide of WW2.

Churchill said, 'Before El Alamein, we never had a victory. After El Alamein, we never had a loss.'

Listen to the language. What makes it so memorable. Firstly the positive message. Secondly the actual language. Contrast, 'before, after'. Contrast, 'victory, loss'. Repetition, 'El Alamein, we never had'.

For lovers of quotations, another famous quotation which I have often heard at meetings of Toastmasters International speakers' training clubs, and seen on the web is.

This is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning.

We use this quotation to inspire ourselves and others to continue on with any venture. But churchill was referring to one particular incident. The battle of El Alamein.

After the allied

Sunday, November 13, 2022

November 13th, Armistice Day. I remember Harry and wonder if I will ever visit El Alamein Museum

On Armistice day and every day I recall Harry Godfrey, known as Val . because he was born on Valentine's Day in 1919.

He died in 1941 at El Alamein. The plane he was in was shot down and a couple of people survived but he was not one of them.

He was 22 years old.

He was married to my late mother, Netta, for 6 months.

Her father, Paul, had to go round to the boys' parents to tell them. Paul said as soon as Harry's parents opened their front door to him and saw his distraught face they knew the bad news.

Netta had to keep the letter saying he was missing, presumed dead, in order for her to re-marry. After she died, I found it.

During WWII she later married my father.

Netta on her wedding day to my father.

I went to the 80th birthday party of a distant relative. One of her relatives pulled out a lot of family photos.

He said, 'This is her, this is so and so. I don't know who this couple are.'

I gasped, 'That's my parents! It's their wedding photo.'

'Are you sure it's them? It doesn't look like a wedding photo. She isn't wearing white.'

'It was wartime. Hard to get white. And not suitable. It was her second marriage. She lost her first husband in the war.'

'Would you like the photo?'

'I'd love it. Thank you. Are you sure?'

'Yes. It doesn't mean anything to me. But it's your parents and it means a lot to you so you should have it.'

For ancestry.com I have separated the picture of my father and mother to give each of them their separate entry in the family tree.

Bride Netta's wartime wedding.

My husband has used computer aided software to enhance the photo of her, making it sharper, and another programme to add colour. She had a sallow skin and brown eyes. Regardless, the likeness is good and I makes her look lovely, which she was, always smiling like me.

Netta Lansbury, wartime wedding photo. Colour enhanced by Trevor Sharot.

Always smiling around people, who are a fun distraction. Sad sometimes, when alone. When the past creeps up.

My mother died in the year 2000. I had been hunting for details of her husband for years, since then. I only recently found his Harry's obituary which does not mention my mother.

If his family have any descendants, I would love to hear from them. I would have liked a picture of my mother's marriage to him.

Where could I visit connected with him? The El Alamein cemetery has his name on the wall. Just a name. That's all.

Wikipedia has several photos of the cemetery and the museum and tanks on display.