Photos deliver a shock

I’m inspired by my sister Deborah Rice’s recent posting of terrific items from our family’s past – part of the trawl that our grandfather, William, brought back from the Egyptian bases of World War One, about 100 years ago.

When I was searching for photos of William for a recent history, I asked Dad if he had any. Dad was his son-in-law. But Mum had died and Dad was the keeper of a suitcase that had gained a more-or-less sacred status in our family.

“Up on top of Mum’s wardrobe, in the old red suitcase. You might find some pics there.”

And sure enough I did. The cache was extraordinary – photos of William breaking in horses in the Egyptian desert; scenes from Cairo, all lit up at night; the digs at the grand hotel where William’s unit was billeted.

There were photos William took of war ships docking in the ports closest to Cairo and others taken of him, a handsome mustachioed officer reclining in a wicker chair. My personal favourite is one of him on his horse, standing with three other members of the Second Light Horse Brigade, in front of the pyramids, his strong face staring directly into the camera.

There were World War Two photos too. They followed William’s war, through Beirut, Jaffna, and other places in the Middle East.

And then a shock: in among his photos, four graphic ones that could not possibly have been taken by him.

In one, the bodies of two people hang, held up by the boot-straps. Three people look on from the bottom of the photo, one smiling nonchalantly. It is another photo that reveals their identity. This is similar to the first, but the photographer has stood back to take in the images of five people. Clearly written on the board above all are their names, among them – Mussolini and Petacci.

Benito Mussolini was the fascist dictator who led Italy into World War Two. He had died a coward, deposed and trying to flee, when he was executed in the small village of Giulino di Mezzagra, in northern Italy. Clara Petacci was his lover.

As I stood with the red suitcase beside me, I absorbed the significance of the photos. These were similar to ones that can be found on the internet today but they were originals. William’s wife, our grandmother Irene, was half Italian. Her father was from a place near that village. Maybe the photos had come from connections of hers.

The power of the photos was in the very old-fashioned-ness of them. These were not Instagram photos that had been shared along. Today, any one of us could have hundreds of photos tucked into our phones in our back pockets. If we took a photo of a photo you’d barely be able to tell. It wouldn’t be remarkable.

Maybe this set were mass-produced but from the quality and style it looked unlikely. Someone who was right there, in April 1945, had obviously taken these photos. They had captured an extraordinary moment of the twentieth century. They’d developed these photos, maybe made copies, and then given them to Mum’s family.

I rang and asked Mum’s sister, Shirley, about the provenance of the photos. But she apologized that she was too old to remember. Yes, friends of the family had come and gone from Italy to Australia up until World War Two. Italy’s role as an enemy had brought suffering and shame to the family. The name Amilcare had been so proudly articulated, the name of Mum’s Italian great uncle. But since this was the Il Duce’s second name, the word disappeared from the family lexicon, barely to be uttered again.

The visitors from Italy stopped being invited and stopped coming, since the family home was a proud bastion of Australian-British values, with William serving in the Middle East, once again with the Allies.

Shirley could tell me nothing of the photos. But here they were, slipped in amongst William’s, where they sat quietly for many years before giving me that almost electric shock.

I was going to post these photos on the anniversary of Mussolini’s death but it’s the birthday of my sister-in-law, who I love and associate with good things, so I’m exposing these images now.