When Ray Ward died in 1999, his sons discovered an old and dusty manuscript in an Afrika Korps ammunition box in the cellar of the family home in Glasgow. These papers contained a collection of their father’s memoirs, entitled “The Mirror of Monte Cavallara”, which detailed his experiences as an infantry officer during the Second World War. One of his sons, Robin, undertook the mammoth task of editing and annotating the manuscript. Ray Ward joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in 1940 and served in the 1st Battalion throughout the war. His memoirs give vivid accounts of his time in Eritrea, Abyssinia, Egypt, the Western Desert, Sicily and Italy. Evidence of the bravery, adventure and danger that characterised this conflict, “The Mirror of Monte Cavallara” is the chronicle of one’s man’s war, and an account of an illustrious Scottish regiment’s role in the British Eighth Army. But it is also the story of a son’s discovery of his father’s war-time experiences, rarely spoken about when he was alive. An artist and writer, Robin Ward brings a modern relevance and interpretive sensibility to his father’s perspective of the past.
