Framed SIGNED WORLD WAR II SNAPSHOT PHOTOGRAPH of Winston Churchill in North Africa

Description

Signed souvenir of the war: A pair of original snapshot photographs, one of them signed, of Winston Churchill visiting in August 1942 the Abbassia Barracks in Cairo, headquarters for Britain’s Eighth Army in the Middle East.

The snapshots are affixed to a vintage album page with inked notations that read: “L[eft]: P.M. Churchill & A.C.M. Brooke. R[ight]: P.M. Churchill & ACM Tedder. Ab[b]assia 1942.” The photograph on the left, with General Alan Brooke (who also appears in the background of the photo with Air Marshall Tedder), is signed in ink: “Winston S. Churchill” across the lower portion of the image.

Churchill visited the Eighth Army in Cairo twice during the month of August 1942, on his way to and on his way back from his first meeting with Stalin in Moscow. Abbassia was a huge garrison with shops, churches, cinemas. It even had an internal bus service. All the barracks were built by the Turks during their occupation before the First World War, and were renamed by the Allies after their victory.

Abbassia also was where Churchill himself had been barracksed in 1898 during his time with the 21st Lancers, attached to General Kitchener for the Battle of Omdurman campaign that would generate Churchill’s masterful book, THE RIVER WAR.

The snapshot page is here matted and handsomely framed in black walnut (11 x 14 inches overall).