“A couple of months before my father died I asked him what had happened to him during the Great War. He, more or less, told me the story that’s in the album and I wrote it down verbatim. He had never spoken about it before.

After he told the story, he produced the photographs with no explainations. All it said on the envelope was “for posterity.” But he then explained all of them! The original information is now with the Imperial War Museum .

During his lifetime he shared various anecdotes and Arabic phrases with us. He had a camel called Ishmeel which he hated! As it was very cold in the desert over night, he bartered with a local Arab for a mattress which was full of flees! He threw it into the Dead Sea and all the flees floated to the top. He dried it and slept under it the next day.”

Marion Rook