Studio portrait of 23289 Stoker Francis Bernard Keenan, HMAS Sydney, inset into postcard of a ...

Studio portrait of 23289 Stoker Francis Bernard Keenan, HMAS Sydney, inset into postcard of a desert scene in Egypt. The postcard was sent to his girlfriend Ruth Tobin, with the message 'Greetings and Remembrance from Mr Hyde." (See Reference image). The pseudonym 'Mr Hyde' was a joke between them, Ruth called him Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde' and Sto Keenan referred to her as 'Miss Prim and Proper'. An engineer from Carlisle, WA Sto Keenan enlisted in the RAN on 9 June 1939. He was killed in action, aged 25, when HMAS Sydney II was sunk in the Indian Ocean by the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran on 20 November 1941. Following the sinking of the Sydney, Ruth Tobin enlisted in the Australian Special Wireless Group where she worked as an enemy intercept 'kana' operator, trained to intercept and transcribe the katakana, the Japanese writing system used for morse code.