Description
Object description
Service of an unidentified transport officer with the 2/20th Battalion, London Regiment in Macedonia and Palestine during the First World War. The photographs from Macedonia show the battalion's tented camp near Yanesh ('Janes'); pack transport section personnel, bivouac tents, mascot puppy and mules lines; the Army Service Corps dump at Chaushitsa ('Corsica') including 2/20th London's transport section camp; officers on the summit of Mort Homme with memorial cross and bones of Balkan War dead; dugouts around the ruined village of Reselli and facing 'The Nose'. There are also a series of photographs covering the battalion's march back from the frontline to Salonika prior to embarkation to Egypt in summer 1917. Locations of the bivouac camps are given as: Callibar, Salamanli, Ambeurkoi, Ushantar, Hadzi Junas.
Named officers in the Salonika photographs are: Capt Ash (180th Brigade staff), Lt Jones (Transport Officer), Lt Dark (Quartermaster), Lt West (Assistant Transport Officer), Lt Lovell, Transport Sergeant Maloney, Corporals Patrick, White, Wilgress and Lance Corporal Henny (Transport Section NCOs), Privates Airie and Ashdown (officers batmen), Private Bestwick (Transport Officers' Groom); Padre Jenkins (180th Brigade); Captain Travers (killed), Captain Churchouse (RAMC), Lts Baker and Pilbeam (all 'A' Company).
The album also contains photographs taken on board the transport SS IVERNIA taking the battalion to Egypt and its arrival at Alexandria; camps and views at Ismailia and Kantara including No.2 Infantry Base Depot, battalion training and Turkish POWs manually moving a fully constructed hut. Other photographs cover the 2/20th Londons in the Palestine Campaign with scenes at Shellal - Egyptian Labour Corps road building, officers bivouac quarters and transport (Holt caterpillar tractor, train and pack mule); Tel-el-Fara; Wadi Ghuzzi; Ghamli - Egyptian army sappers, watering donkeys and camels; the battlefield at Gaza including the Turkish 'Ali Munta' (Simpson's Ridge) position, Tank Redoubt (including knocked out British tank) and Merrioneth Redoubt. Other locations in Palestine are Bab-el-Wad showing a kite balloon being readied for ascent, Nebi Samwell, Esani, Bethlehem, Jerusalem (following capture in December 1917). Named officers in the Palestine photographs are: Captain Reynolds, Lieutenants Lovell, Salter and West (all 'D' Company).
There are also a number of photographs showing scenes in Egypt in the immediate aftermath of the First World War when the officer served with the Inland Water Transport (IWT). A number of these cover local people, buildings and street scenes / landscapes. Locations where the photographs were taken are: Cairo, Shebin-el-Kom including state visit by the King to a government school, pack camels loaded into railway trucks for transport to the army, sick camel on a cart; Embaba (near Cairo) - group photograph of staff at the Embaba Transhipping Station. Also scenes of the riots against British rule in 1919 around Giza including a burning petrol barge in the Nile; the officer's depot ship PS1; sternwheel river steamer PURITAN carrying Europeans from Luxor during the riots; detachment from the 1/10th Battalion, London Regiment at Shebin-el-Kom during the riots, also British troops and Egyptian police mounting guard and armoured cars on patrol. Also a British armoured train sent to Tala during the riots.
Other subjects covered in the album include a tented camp of the 2/23rd Battalion, London Regiment at Beirut; the officer's journey home for demobilisation on board the transports HMT ABBASIEH and HMT NILE; army transit camp at Taranto in Italy and subsequent train journey north through Italy.
Physical description
Blue cloth covered album with the words 'Post Card Album' in gold lettering on front cover. Each album page is covered by a sheet of paper into which cuts have been made for slip mounting the prints and postcards. Handwritten annotations in ink are to be found on the paper sheets. One postcard is loose inside the album.