Albert Park soldier’s WWI snapshots survive for more than a century

CENTURY-old photo albums from the battlefields of WWI are some of the only links to Melbourne soldier Lance Corporal John Fraser that survived after his death on the Western Front.

CENTURY-old photograph albums from the battlefields of WWI are some of the only links to Melbourne soldier Lance Corporal John Fraser that survived.

Fraser, who was killed on the Western Front aged 25, sent his mother the albums as a Christmas gift in 1916 from photographs he took on a box brownie camera.

They show the life of a soldier on the dusty battlefields of Egypt, a landing at Helles near Gallipoli, as well as some travel, including a trip to Stonehenge and St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

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His family has released the photographs in his memory.

John Fraser’s registration papers.

Somehow, among the chaos of war, he managed to develop the photographs and send each page back to his mother.

He sent enough to fill two albums and wrote: “To mother, with ever fondest love. From Jack. England 1916.”

Fraser’s descendants have treasured the photograph album, along with his posthumously awarded medals, because they do not have a grave to mourn him.

The Albert Park soldier, who was one of eight children, was killed in action in Ypres, Belgium on September 16, 1917.

Like so many of the 60,000 Australian volunteers killed in the war, he was buried in an unmarked grave.

Fraser had no children, but his niece, Janice Rayner, inherited the photograph album from his mother.

John Fraser’s photographs of the landing at Cape Helles.

The pyramids (above) and the Sphinx of Giza in 1916. Pictures: John Fraser

Mrs Rayner would visit her grandmother, Isabella, in Albert Park, during school holidays as a child and would often look at the photographs.

“I would be given the photographs to look at as a treat,” she said. “They were still in the brown paper that he sent them in back from the war and they were in the condition that they still are.”

Mrs Rayner said the photograph album was always treated as special, but the significance of them did not become clear until her grandchildren became aware of them.

They are now going to be scanned and stored at the State Library of Victoria to preserve them forever.

Mrs Rayner said the photographs were rarely discussed because so many families suffered loss in the war. “It wasn’t very long until we had the second war in 1939 and the first war went into the background,” she said.

The Anzac Guard during WWI. Pictures: John Fraser

“We grew up with respect for them. My grandmother was still very sad about Jack until she died.

“To her it was unnecessary that he died.”

Mrs Rayner’s granddaughter, Meg, only first saw the photographs this year.

Meg Rayner said she was touched by the thoughtfulness of her great-great uncle.

“The photographs look so peaceful, which is strange because he was there at such a point of conflict,” she said.

“He must have been terrified when he was taking them but he was thinking of his mum and sending her photographs.”