1940 military mail with civil censor

[Jim Etherington]

Please can anyone explain/suggest how this item passed through the postal system? I am assuming that it was sent by a member of the BEF because a range of No 1300s military censor marks were in use in France. But was it posted in France or the UK? (The London PAID cancel dated 2 May indicates it was too early to be mail sent during the evacuation period when free postage was enjoyed by returning troops) Again I am assuming it was initially censored at unit level with censor mark No1338, but no FPO datestamp has been applied. At some point it has been censored a second time when the Army Censor label has been applied. Was it at that point that the civilian censor mark was applied? This begs the question was the military at some time using civilian censor marks and if so, where? There are no back stamps to indicate that it may have passed through Home Depot at Bournemouth.

Nic illustrates two similar covers in World War Two Censor Marks (p22), but only notes that "some active service mail was censored or re-censored during May and June."

[Peter Harvey]

Hi Jim,

I do not think there is an easy answer to this. Early May 1940 the British had advanced into Belgium and where actively digging in when this was posted. As you know, most BEF mail at this time did get an FPO strike.

The free mail concession was granted to the BEF, so FPO datestamps and 'free' postage is normal. I understand that free post in the UK (on arrival) was also  allowed during the evacuation period. I wonder if this might have been an official letter/ correspondence. So censored by a Unit officer, forwarded to base (label) then bag to London, with the machine datestamp and CM7 cachet applied?

I tried to find a WW2 reference to 2 Lightfoot Drive Harraby, no luck.

Hopefully someone else can help out.

[Jim Etherington]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for your suggestions.
I have since found among my collection a similar cover with a civil censor mark (no 2818) struck with a FPO 115 dated 30 MY 40 that was being used in Norway at this point in time. It is also resealed with a military censor label. This makes me wonder whether the first cover, which I assumed had come from France, had in fact come from Norway. I note neither of the two covers illustrated in Nic's book, like the one under discussion, have FPO cancels, just the military censor mark and PAID cancels.
Could it be that mail from Norway was for some reason attracting civil censorship? I have no other covers from Norway to test this hypotheses.

[Nick Colley]

Hi, Jim, how interesting you should say that. I've been puzzling over why there was no FPO since I read your post, and I could think of no reason for that if the cover originated in France. Your date is the 2nd May, and Hitler's offensive didn't start until the 10th, so there's no obvious cause for troops to be separated from their postal facilities. However, it had occurred  to me that since operations weren't going too well in Norway, that could explain why what postal facilities there were for the troops in Norway had become not readily accessible to the troops. We need more observations of the censor marks, don't we, before we can confirm or deny the Norway hypothesis.

chrs
N

[Peter Harvey]

Jim,

Mike Dobbs might have Alastair Kennedy's record cards for the A100 censor cachets, he might pick this up from the forum, but also might be work at email.

Peter

[Michael Dobbs]

Peter & Jim

Its not records cards, its a very large ledger and I was about to look for it when I remembered that I have loaned it to Geoff Hanney to see if he can scan it somehow!

I've had a look through Cornelius's "British FPOs in Scandinavia 1940-47" (1981) but there is no reference to that particular censor number.

Mike

[Nick Colley]

We need to prod Geoff, then. He'll have some spare time now he's got the auction list out of the way :-)

chrs
N

BTW, Mike, what format (page size) is AK's 'ledger'?

[Jim Etherington]

Thanks all for your assistance. Hopefully Geoff may have the answer.
Jim