Malta, Luqa Airfield, June 1943: the Commander of No 23 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Wing Commander John B Selby, DSO, DFC, already on flight dress, and his observer looking at their de Havilland Mosquito II aircraft “P-Peter” while other members of the Squadron watch from atop the blast wall at the Dispersal Point. The four 20mm cannon are corked to prevent dirt damaging them. Victor Sierra

Wing Commander and his Mosquito

Soldiers of the Irish Guards Regiment, armed with Thompson submachine guns and wearing gas masks, advance through smoke in the course of an exercise in Surrey, July 1940.  The appearance has a curious WW1 flavour about it; hard to imagine that real advances were very often conducted in this way in WW2 (or, in reality, in WW1, either I suppose).  Even at this early date, the Irish Guards had already been seriously "in the wars", with 1 Batt. suffering heavy ship-board losses from air attack during an attempted shipping to Norway, and 2 Batt. being heavily engaged against German forces in the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France - like many other regular British Army units - covering the retreat of the general Allied army to the evacuation ports, prior to their own evacuation to England.  Like 1 Batt., 2 Batt. suffered heavy losses in this operation.  Best regards, JR.

Quis Separabit ? Gas men of the Irish Guards ...

Two RAF’s Transport Command Avro York C Mark I of No. 246 Squadron during a stop at Luqa Airport, Malta, before the departure to India, likely 1945. The No 246 employed this transport aircraft, built by Avro using wings, engines and undercarriage of the Lancaster bomber with a new square section fuselage of much greater capacity, from December 1944 until October 1946 for liaison from Great Britain to India and retour with many stops along the way as Malta. In this photo the plane in background, registration MW165, code “BP”, loading freight. Victor Sierra