Sahara sands shift to reveal WWII bag

Lying under a thin veil of desert sand, a bag belonging to a Second World War soldier has been discovered intact 65 years after he dropped it.

Its contents, buried for decades under the Sahara sun, have remained in remarkable condition, providing a fascinating insight into a bygone era.

There are letters written by family who have long since died, photographs and personal belongings.

Mr Ross was a despatch rider in the 8th Army when he lost the backpack in Egypt in 1942.

It was found recently by a tour guide, Kahled Makram, who was astonished to find letters from Mr Ross's family, including one from the soldier's sister Irene Porter.

Using information in the letters, Mr Makram was able to track down Mrs Porter, 75, with a little help from a British tourist and the internet.

He has already sent her a disc with photographs of the bag's contents. advertisement

Sadly, Mr Ross died three years ago, aged 86. But Mrs Porter, who was only eight when she wrote the letter, is now hoping to have the bag sent to her.

She said: "He (the guide) said it was just lying by the roadside. There were tracks going past and around it. The sand must have suddenly blown away and there it was.

"It's just wonderful, it really is. My mother died just before the war ended and my father died 10 years ago. To actually see something they have written and they sent ... I can't really describe it. It really is a blast from the past."

Having initially joined the Royal Signals Corps in 1936, Mr Ross, from Burnley, Lancs, was in the Sahara desert during the war as a despatch rider and wireless operator for the Long Range Desert Group when the bag disappeared.

Mrs Porter said: "It is bringing the whole thing back - sitting in my living room with my brothers and sisters and parents writing the letters.

"It is an incredible feeling. I can't really explain it. It does not make me sad. The only sad part is that Alec died three years ago and I just wish this had come to light earlier."

Mrs Porter, who runs classes for the elderly in her home town of Burnley, said despite being buried for 65 years, the bag and its possession are in excellent condition.

"In the letter I wrote to Alec, I put news about home, what I was doing at school and general family gossip.

"I had another brother, Donald, who was out in North Africa at the same time so I wrote the same letter to them both.

"There is a letter from his then girlfriend saying how she missed him and how much she was looking forward to seeing him again. There are even photos of Alec himself."

Mr Ross returned to Britain in 1944 and was stationed at Bletchley Park, near Whaddon, Milton Keynes, where he married Lillian. The couple have two daughters, Shirley and Norah.

Mrs Porter said: "I will be so pleased when I can actually hold the letters in my hand and feel something my mother actually wrote to Alec all those years ago."

Geoff Kolbe, a tourist who helped track Mrs Porter down, is trying to arrange for Mr Makram to go to Lancashire to personally hand the bag over.

Mr Kolbe said he was on a tour of the Sahara desert in the south-west corner of Egypt at Gilf Kebir "when the guide happened to mention that he had recently found the bag of a soldier who had been serving in World War II lying in the sand".

"He said he had put some details on an internet search engine and had found Mrs Porter's account of her brother serving in Egypt but didn't know how to get in contact with her.

"When I returned home I contacted the website and managed to get hold of Mrs Porter to tell her about the find."

Lovely story. It’s always special to read something a loved one wrote so many years ago, to touch the paper he touched, and to imagine how he must have felt. It’s a special connection.

My great-grandfather took a grand tour of Europe in 1910. In those days, it was a tradition for folks of even middle-class means — if you met someone from Europe, you would keep in touch and of course your kid could stay with the family if they ever made it the Continent. And you’d return the favor if their kids ever came to America.

My dad has my ggf’s postcards from that tour, and photos, and descriptions of the wonders he saw all over Europe. I have my great-uncle Jimmy’s letters from Europe, letters he wrote during WWII. Jimmy was my father’s father’s brother, an officer in Army intelligence, and one of the first Yanks to investigate Berchtesgarten. The letters he sent home are on Hitler’s stationery and composed on one of his secretarial pool’s typewriters.

Jimmy was raised on his father’s stories and reminiscences of Europe. Two world wars later, Jimmy was giving his dad updates. Most of the landmarks in his cherished memories were gone forever. The pictures and letters from my great-grandfather and my great-uncle provide a sort of pair of bookends, before and after snapshots of a continent ravaged.

My grandfather didn’t go to Europe. He was 4-F after losing all the fingers on his right hand in a table saw accident in the ‘30s. So he spent the war as a uniformed civilian, an architect and contractor who built airfields for the Navy and the AAF all over Florida. After the war, he moved on to large-scale architecture, mostly hospitals. Including the one in which I was born.

It’s important not just to read the content, but to touch the object. This was in his pocket. This gave him strength and comfort in the darkest days. This gave him the strength to come through that, and to come home and become the man I knew, and loved, and remember. That has to count for something.

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