28th December 1940: Members of the Australian 2/15th Infantry Battalion wait to board the troop transport the Queen Mary at Pyrmont in Sydney. They were about to leave to fight in the Middle East.
Second World War.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
Happy Christmas Eve! Here’s is a season-appropriate painting by French artist Timoléon Marie Lobrichon (1831-1914), titled La Vitrine du magasin de jouets.
23rd December 1953: Australian soldiers finish decorating a Christmas tree near the new border between North and South Korea. The tree is decorated with electric lights, to be powered by a generator.
The Korean War ended earlier that year, in July. 17 000 Australians served in Korea between 1950 and 1953.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
In a photograph dated the 17th of December, 1933, American communists attack a group of Ukrainians in Chicago, USA. The Ukrainians were demonstrating to raise awareness of the Holodomor, Stalin’s genocide of millions of people in Ukraine.
Between 1932 and 1933 Soviet authorities confiscated the food and crops of millions of ethnic Ukrainians, deliberately starving them to death. A similar genocide was also committed in Kazakhstan, where 42% of the ethnic population was killed and replaced with Russian colonists.
Unlike the Holocaust, there was very limited Western media coverage of the Holodomor, despite conservative estimates putting Ukraine’s death toll on par with it, and other estimates putting it even higher. This was because prominent journalists were either friends of Stalin or communists themselves, and they refused to report on it.
Amongst these genocide deniers was The New York Times’ Walter Duranty, while Welsh reporter Gareth Jones risked his life to get the truth out.
1873 illustration from the first Ukrainian translation. X
Danish author Hans Christian Andersen‘s fairy tale Thumbelina was published for the first time on the 16th of December, 1835.
The story, about a “thumb-sized” girl who goes on an adventure involving toads, birds, and a mole, and who then meets a miniature prince, wasn’t well-received at the time because it didn’t teach any morals.
The first English translation of the book was completed by Mary Howitt in the 1840s.
Usually omitted from English versions of the story, Andersen’s original featured a bluebird telling the story to Andersen himself. The bird had been in love with Thumbelina, and was heartbroken when she married the prince.
New Zealand Mistletoe circa 1920, by Nina Jones (born in Christchurch in 1871, died in Nelson in 1926). Jones was a prominent New Zealand botanical artist.
Christmas Day in the London Bridge Canteen depicts HRH Princess Helena Victoria, creator and Chairman of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Committee of the YMCA paying a visit to workers during the First World War.
The princess, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, was one of a number of royals to drop German names from her title at the outbreak of the war. She never married, but went on to live through both World Wars.
The image was created by war artist Clare Atwood in 1920. Atwood, an unusual woman for her time, was a known lesbian who lived in a ménage à trois relationship with two other women until their deaths.
Nearly one in ten of the personnel serving under Britain’s Royal Air Force command in the Second World War were from the Royal Australian Air Force.
US Marines are seen here taking up positions near the unfinished swimming pool during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on the 7th of December, 1941.
The attack finally succeeded in drawing the United States into the Second World War.
This collection of images shows Australian soldiers celebrating Christmas in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.
Australia committed approximately 61 000 troops to the Vietnam War between 1962 and 1972 (and again occasionally until 1975), including many thousands of conscripts.
All the photographs are from the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
Private David McColl of Canberra, hanging puddings to mature before Christmas.
December 1967. Nui Dat, Vietnam.
Newly arrived members of 3rd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR), preparing their base camp for the Christmas season.
November 1970. Nui Dat, South Vietnam.
Corporal Arthur Wallis, 21, sharpening a knife in preparation for carving the three prime hams he has prepared for Christmas.
In Times Gone By... 
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