I can’t even begin to describe the feelings I had when I discovered an envelope filled with negatives of photographs my father took during his time in Burma in World War II. This envelope contained several medium-format and 35mm negatives he took while serving in the 14th Army, Royal Armoured Corps, which was a tank corps of the British Army.

Years ago, I discovered a box full of hundreds of negatives he had taken after the war when he emigrated to the USA and travelled around and photographed post-war America. I’ve gone through them a few times and scanned a number of them, but I was astonished to realize I had somehow missed this particular envelope containing these special photographs from his time in the war.

I found them a few months ago while sorting things as I prepared to move. I packed them up and made a note to revisit them once I was settled in. A few weeks ago, that time came, and I couldn’t wait to scan them and really see what they looked like. I used a high-end flatbed scanner for the medium-format negatives and a camera scanning rig I use for the 35mm slides and negatives. The results were incredible, and I realized these had probably never seen the light of day—certainly no prints of them existed. Although there was some fading, the main issue with a few was some accidental double exposures that obscured parts of the images. But overall, they were a remarkable look at his time in Burma with his buddies, as well as scenes he captured of local villages and landscapes.

These pictures sparked a curiosity in me, as I realized I knew almost nothing about this time in his life. My father passed away when I was 20, and he never spoke of it when I was younger. I wanted to do some research to see what I could find out about his unit, as well as his time before and after the war. I was able to piece together a timeline of sorts based on some records I found, along with letters my grandmother had written to her sister around the time of the war’s outbreak. My grandparents were German citizens who needed to escape the country after Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933. They ultimately made it to the USA, but my father had been sent to a boarding school in England in 1934, at the age of eleven, where he remained until the war.

One of the most disturbing records I found in my research was a document showing his temporary internment at the age of 17, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He was rounded up in England, along with what were known as German alien enemies, and held before being released after a tribunal hearing declared him exempt from internment. No one in my family knew about this, and I’m sure it was something he kept to himself. Shortly after his release, he enlisted in the Royal Army and was sent to Burma—but not before he changed his family name from Bardenhewer to Bennett, done as a precaution in case he was captured and faced execution as a traitor to Germany.

I have been working on creating family archives on the Permanent.org platform, and this seemed like the perfect place to share this story along with the photos and records I found. I’ll be writing more about Permanent.org in the coming months and creating additional archives for myself and my clients, as I believe it is one of the best platforms for true legacy and historical archiving.

I’m happy to talk with you more about my father’s story, as well as Permanent.org, and how it might work well for your family legacy.

Visit his Permanent.org archive