A small photograph of an American soldier’s sweetheart survived the war and was found 70 years later when the sergeant’s visor cap was being restored for the National War Museum in Valletta.

“The cap was in good condition. I was inspecting the seam to see if it was all intact and just as I lifted the leather band, I saw a tiny, black and white photo held tight by the spike of a button.

“I wondered who the woman could possibly be,” Claire Bonavia, the principal conservator at Heritage Malta, told this newspaper.

The visor cap is part of the complete army uniform that war veteran Herb Tollefson donated to Heritage Malta’s national collection when he visited the island last year to celebrate his 96th birthday.

The trip followed another in December of 2013, when Mr Tollefson came here looking for friends he had made when deployed on the island to repair aircraft during World War II.

He made an appeal via the Times of Malta, which led to the war veteran meeting the son of his wartime buddy and late police sergeant John Mifsud. Since John Mifsud Jr also lives in the US, the two flew to Malta in July last year.

‘Who could this woman possibly be?’ the restorer asked herself

It was then that Mr Tollefson donated his US Army Air Corps uniform, which still fit him. Mr Mifsud Jr presented five of his father’s medals to the war museum.

During that same trip to Malta, Mr Tollefson also met relatives of a family – by the name of Borg –he was looking for. The family, who used to serve food at the Melita Bar at the Ferries in Sliema, had hosted him when he was here in 1943 as part of a group of 14 mechanics.

The mechanics, from the 26th Air Depot Group, were initially sent to repair an airplane that had to make an emergency landing in Malta following a raid on mainland Europe. Before the mission was completed, however, additional aircraft landed at Luqa and, in their first six months of deployment here, more than 50 damaged aircraft were able to return to service thanks to the young mechanics.

During the war, Mr Tollefson also served in Sicily and Deversoir, Egypt, all along keeping a photo of the woman he had just met in the US in his cap.

He met Eve Davis in 1941, before the United States joined the war effort. His childhood and best friend, William Johnson, was dating her older sister, Mary, and he introduced the future Ms Tollefson. The two could not get married prior to his departure for the war in Egypt and Malta, so she waited until he returned in August 1945. The rest is history, and the bond of the two will now forever be preserved at the war museum at Fort Et Elmo.

Mr Tollefson, 97, told the Times of Malta he had not forgotten the photo but had decided not to tell anybody about it. “But they still found it while restoring [the cap],” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

His uniform is the only one of its kind in Malta’s collection. Curator Charles Debono pointed out that the national collection did not have an original World War II American army uniform before Mr Tollefson donated his.

As with all donated textiles, the uniform had to go through a rigorous process of conservation and restoration, which always includes documenting its condition, examining it for any infestation, repairing it and adding it to the inventory of the national collection.

Speaking from Heritage Malta’s conservation division at Bighi, Ms Bonavia said it was quite rare that somebody would donate their own uniform because garments were usually handed over by heirs.

The discovery is quite fascinating and makes our job interesting

“Herb is so proud of his uniform that survived the war, and the following seven decades. The uniform was in very good condition and it was during a routine examination of the seam at the rim of the cap that I lifted the leather band. And there it was, staring right back at me and held by the spike of the button, a cut-out of a young smiling lady,” the conservator said.

The tiny, 1cm by 1.5cm photo was immediately sent for conservation, and meanwhile Ms Bonavia enlarged the photo so she could ask Mr Tollefson about the lady when he next visited the island.

It so happened that an advance party from Buckingham Palace visited the Bighi centre in preparation for Queen Elizabeth’s visit last month. They were the first people to learn about the discovery and asked Ms Bonavia whether a meeting could be arranged between the Queen and the war veteran. Unfortunately, Mr Tollefson, who had already booked a trip to Malta, missed the royal visit by just a week.

“Herb’s uniform was one of the restored items that the Queen was shown when she visited our laboratory and when I told her about the discovery she exclaimed: ‘Isn’t it fascinating?’

“The discovery is quite fascinating and that is what makes our job as conservators interesting. Such discoveries make our relationship with the object we are restoring more intimate.

“When you’re conserving an item, you treat it as if it were one of your own, and we have a responsibility to preserve it not just for the present but also for future generations. Even if there are 10 of the same item, only one person wore the particular one we are restoring.”

Asked about Mr Tollefson’s uniform, Ms Bonavia said the garment had a sentimental value and a link with Malta that could not be given a price tag.

Watch a short clip of Ms Bonavia recalling the curious discovery on www.timesofmalta.com.

The lady in the picture

Eva Catherine Davis spent her childhood in Vancouver, Canada, until she turned 12, when her family migrated to the US.

She worked in local hospitals and became head nurse in a Seattle maternity ward during World War II while she waited for Herb to return from the war.

The two married in August of 1945, just before the war officially ended and she continued in family medicine in Tacoma until her retirement in the late 1970s.

She loved to travel and, in their retirement years, the couple went to Norway to find long lost relatives, apart from visiting other relatives in Canada. Her son, Steve, believes she would have loved to travel to Malta with Herb to see the beautiful “island in the sun”.

She enjoyed baking and made sure the cookie jar was always full of delicious treats.

Preserving textiles

Clothes, uniforms, tapestries and carpets are among items that are checked for infestations, quarantined and cleaned. They are documented throughout the whole process of conservation and checked every two years.

The conservation division also takes care of the stands propping up the exhibits to ensure pressure is distributed evenly across the garments, preventing damage.

Textiles cannot be exhibited for a long time, as they can be damaged by humidity, light and dust. They are therefore displayed in museums on rotation, according to Ms Bonavia. She has been working with Heritage Malta (successor of the Museums Department) for 30 years and has spent the last two decades focusing on the conservation of textiles.

The oldest textiles in the national collection are Coptic fragments of tunics dating to 500AD. They are temporarily exhibited at the Inquisitor’s Palace in Vittoriosa.