The Soldier's Story

When I blipped a selection of Holy Pictures on Thursday I mentioned two I was holding back to photograph seperately.

Well, here they are.

They were my Father's, brought back from the war.

He was in the North African Campaign and was in Tripoli in January 1943 where he picked up the first one. It's a picture of a Saint Salvator of Horta. I had to look him up - a 16th century Catalan Franciscan who healed the sick. Since I'd never heard of him, it was a puzzle as to why my Dad had this, but apparently this saint was only canonised in 1938 so at that time he may have been better known.

Anyway, the other one is obviously St Joseph and on the back my Dad has written 'Via Grande, Sicily 24/10/43'.

Tripoli then Sicily. I knew my Dad had been there - we'd seen the photographs of him in the desert with the big guns (he was in the Royal Artillery) but seeing the length of time it took them all to move up and out of Libya into Italy makes you wonder how they managed to stay sane. Because of my Dad's army history I'm always very moved by Hamish Henderson's song 'The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily' sometimes known simply as 'Ye Banks of Sicily'. Here's the McCalman's version of it.

I have no idea how my Dad came by these two Holy Pictures.

In truth, they are the only real sign I have that in the 1940s he must still have been practising his faith. In the end, the war did for it though. Either what he saw or had to do meant that by the time he came home, he'd turned his back on organised religion. I guess he wasn't the only one.