Flashback Friday #5: Postcards

My grandfather and his brother traveled extensively during the first World War and into the following decades, filming newsreels, what we know today as documentary films and eventually motion pictures.
 
As my grandfather traveled, he wrote postcards to his sons back in the US. The year, I think, is 1931 or 32 (the ink is smudged). This card was sent from Delhi, India.
 

 

 
It reads:
 

Dear Boys
 
Have been here a week and will soon be leaving for a month on the northern frontier in Khyber Pass and at Peshewar.
 
Love, Dad

 
The second card (December 17, 1932) from Alexandria, Egypt seems to be following up on a promise to find the boys some swords.
 

Having a good trip. Haven't found any swords yet but still have hope.
 
Love, Dad

 

 

 
I try to imagine the man, husband and father that my grandfather was. All I have are these postcards and a few photographs. My father never spoke about his father and what I heard from my mother does not conform to the image conjured up by these few written communications. My mother told me that my grandfather had deserted his family when my father and his brother were quite young. Now whether he deserted them in the sense of "abandonment" or in the sense that he was away on another adventure in foreign lands, that I don't know and I have no one to ask.
 
So along with these quite romantic postcards of exotic places I have also uncovered many more questions about my father's family history that I will never be able to answer. Yet I keep sorting through papers and photos, hoping that some bit of information will surface and I will know them all a little better.