PARADING FOR COLONEL WARDEN*

*Colonel Warden was Winston Churchill's code name or nom de guerre.

"Oops - sorry ..."

" .... try this way."

On 4th February 1943 Winston Churchill visited the New Zealand 2nd Division at Castel Benito near Tripoli.

The above images are from Wikipedia and the National Library.

Today I was reading about Winston Churchill visiting the New Zealand troops after the battles of Alam Halfa, El Alamein and El Agheila and remembered some photographs that my father took of Churchill. Dad was in the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry and fought in Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy joining up in 1939 and returning home in 1945.

Dad's photographs have largely been lost or destroyed (by us kids when young) and scattered with some in my possession, some in my sister's and my deceased brother (the magpie) purloined most which have disappeared with his possessions after his death. It's a good object lesson of the importance of looking after family photographs and heirlooms.

Looking through the few that I have, I found three from his original collection. I used to think that these weren't very good but am intrigued to see that the 'official' ones aren't much better. Dad was pretty close to Churchill and General Freyberg when he took these:

It's a nice bit of history.

I put these photos on a Neighbourly site- Old NZ Photographs and a contributor sharpened and colourised them: