Canal Zoners

Below are a small collection of photographs from my time in the Canal Zone with my late Father, (P173594) Major Thomas John Goodman MBE RE., who organised a closure sale for the RE Works Stores in Moascar, just before the evacuation. These include the Works Depot 'closing auctions' and also the Depot Management Team (my father is on the right hand side with ‘stick’ in that one).

My father (and family) was posted to the R.E. Works Depot, Moascar on the 18th April 1954, and I believe we were quartered at 12 Southend Avenue, Ismailia. At that time I was just 4 years of age.

On the 1st March 1956, when I was six, we left in a hurry and went onwards to my fathers’ next posting in Singapore on the SS Empire Fowey.

In my Father’s document bag, I discovered that he had been issued with a 5 year passport at the British Consulate, Ismailia on 1st April 1955. It includes reference to a number of middle Eastern countries, but there are no entry / exit stamps to indicate if it was ever used ? It does not include entitlement for any of our family members on it. Perhaps this was for a covert operation? Any clues? He had been in M.O.I.(S.P.), S.O.E. (Station XII) and the Australian SRD, during WW2.

Footnote: According to Government figures, the scrap value of our military installations, stores, weapons and vehicles owned in Egypt was about £4 million scrap value. Of these £2,870,000 worth have been transferred under the Treaty to the Egyptian Government and about £460,000 worth have so far been bought by them. The stores, weapons and vehicles held in the Canal Zone were estimated to be worth about £210 million at replacement value in 1953. About £750,000 worth had been sold to the Egyptian Government and none of these stores were transferred free. All the remaining stores have been sold and they have been restricted to avoid stores of what one might call an offensive kind,