Libia 1942 Carro italiano M13

Dear Mr. Oreste,

Your pictures bring a richness of detail and authenticity to a time and place that has always fascinated (even haunted me at times). As a child I lived in Tripoli Libya in the early 1960's. My father worked for an oil company there. My friends and I often found relics of the War - bullets, bayonets, helmets. And after big sandstorms (ghiblies we called them, an Italian word I think)our fathers working on oil rigs in the desert would find wrecked tanks, crashed airplanes, trucks; and they would bring interesting artifacts back for us to see. We all brought these into our school classes for show and tell days.

On weekend trips with my family we drove out of Tripoli along roads through olive groves where buildings where still painted in camafloge colors On roads going up through the Jebel hills and into the desert I saw pillboxes set into the rocky outcrops on either side of the road and there where anti-tank barriers called dragon's teeth still in place.

I live in Chicago now but have read extensively about the history of the North African campaigns of 1940-1943 and thought often about what I saw when I lived in Tripoli. Here is the link to a post I wrote on my blog about using Google Earth to help us all see each other and understand more about our world and our history

Best regards, Michael Hugos

nice words! and nice blog ;) thx u for share yuor experince.

Caro Michael, I was born in 1947 and my father (dead in 1987) was soldier in Africa, and took those photos in 1942-43. Using Panoramio and Google Earth I tried to trace the way of its adventure; how You explain in your blog "using Google Earth to help us all see each other and understand more about our world and our history". So I'm very happy this way pass through the sites as a child you lived.

Saluti, Oreste Bighi

PS: About the world’s resources don't worry, I suggest you tu expand Google-Earth with the Google-Sky feature to extend "the lines of our face" over all the galaxy.

Tienes una interesante colección de fotos históricas. Muchas gracias por exponerlas. Saludos Manel.