Port Tewfik, Egypt and a sapper named Ray

As I type away I sometimes find things that I'd like to know more about. Today, Great Uncle Bert reached Egypt...actually he reached Egypt on January 16, 1918 but today I typed those pages into this blog...
As he mentioned Port Tewfik I decided to have a bit of a google and see what it might have looked like when he first saw it... I came across several versions of postcards from the period, including quite a few copies of this one:

I am posting it as a picture as I found this on an ebay site and I gather when it is sold it will disappear. Here is the link in any case and perhaps it may still be there for a little while. The interesting thing is that the seller also posted the reverse side of the postcard, which was written on:

I was amazed to have found a postcard that was written on February 9, 1918 by Ray Lipman...just a few weeks after Uncle Bert was in Port Tewfik. The words on the post card, addressed to:

Mrs Ray Lipman

Roker

398 Cleveland St

Surry Hills

NSW

Australia

9.2.18 On active service

My Darling Dolly and boy

I have seen this 

place as it is where 

we disembarked   

The hill in the back 

ground is the only 

hill to been seen.  

In fact we are 

forgetting what a 

hill is as it is a long 

time since we seen 

one. God love you and 

Phillip xxxxxx Ray

Raymond Moss Lipman, sapper, was pretty easy to find on the first World War Embarkation list.

I also found some family history information here.

Anyway, I'm a little sidetracked and need to get back to the diary...but the postcard above no doubt represents how Port Tewfik would have appeared to Uncle Bert.