Cover of the day 7 April 2020

[Peter Harvey]

Here is my starter - hope as many others as possible can join in today.

WW1 French Correspondence Militaire card used to South Brent in Devon cancelled LONDON E.C. PAID 24 SP 14 with the senders address a Pte with No6 Platoon No2 Coy, No 12 Battalion R.M.Brigade.

I can not get his name Breeton, Brenton, Beaton ?

From what I can find No 12 (Deal) Battalion RMLI were only being formed on the outbreak of war and never went to Ostend or Antwerp..... but then maybe I am wrong, this card would suggest that, so any help would be appreciated.

Have a great day indoors !!

[Alan Baker]

FWR, Pte Thomas Brenton, PLY/16360, Deal Battalion, Antwerp, 1914. There is a note that his 1914 Star was sent to HMS Ramillies

[Chris Grimshaw]

My Cover for today is  a further Turkey POW item

Cover from Captain J S S Martin. I.M.S. Captured at KUT, survived and served in WW2 becoming a Major General.

Major-General John Simson Stuart Martin CSI (18 June 1888 – 24 December 1973) was a Scottish doctor in the Indian Medical Service.[1] He served during both World Wars.

Born in Stornoway,[2] he was educated at Oban High School, Rockhampton Grammar School (Queensland) and the University of Edinburgh. He was commissioned into the Indian Medical Service in 1912. He served in Mesopotamia from November 1914 until April 1916 he was taken prisoner by the Turks at the fall of Kut.[2][3] He was mentioned in despatches in 1916. By the time of the start of the Second World War, he was a Colonel, and was further promoted to substantive Major-General 6 March 1943, retiring 6 March 1945.[4][5]

Chris

[Peter Harvey]

Hi Alan, this is great thank you for your time and effort. I have always had an interest in 1914 WW1 material, before the postal systems settled down into WW1 and the very effective Army Postal Service that took shape.

Peter

[quote author=Alan Baker link=topic=1395.msg6279#msg6279 date=1586265340]
FWR, Pte Thomas Brenton, PLY/16360, Deal Battalion, Antwerp, 1914. There is a note that his 1914 Star was sent to HMS Ramillies
[/quote]

[Nick Colley]

Good stuff, chaps.

Folks, my offering is attached; late on parade – apologies. Attached is something which I thought I could make a nice story from. I have a clear and legible signature, his rank and his affiliation, AND he gives his unit at the top of the letter as the return address. All that with the POSTAGE FREE h/s and the Box 111 address. I couldn't ask for much more, could I?

Well, it all went wrong when I looked up his unit, Naval Party 874: it's not listed in http://naval-history.net/xBW-RNNavalParties.htm. Or anywhere else, as far as I can tell. It gets worse: I can find no-one matching the writer's name, and rank in the RNVR in the October and December 1943 Navy Lists. Anyway, that was all the bad news.

So, moving on, the FPO (300, Naples, I think - he refers to the Neopolitans in the text) is dated 30th November 1943, so the POSTAGE FREE h/s is surely to indicate the free Christmas concession, the Box 111 address at Bletchley was, I understand, the undercover address for Bletchley Park. The addressee, the writer's wife, judging from one or two remarks in the text, seems to work there. The writer states at one point: 'I was intrigued with your mathematical references, and wish I were there to help you.' That would support the Bletchley Park connection, I think.

I'm therefore left with asking for help with Naval Party 874: what was it? And who was the writer, and why is he absent from the Navy Lists?

chrs
N

[Chris Weddell]

Nick,

      What do you read the surname as. I am looking at the BP end at the moment but nothing solid yet.

[Nick Colley]

Looks like G.V.Burns to me. What do you reckon?

chrs
N

[Chris Weddell]

That's what I thought Nick but I am not so sure. I will try a few more things out and see if that gets us anywhere.

                                                  Chris

[Chris Weddell]

Nick,

        From 1937 though to at lest 1947 there is an G V Burns on the Navy List as a Civil Engineer Contractor with a Naval Rank but not listed. This appears on a number of the lists.

[Peter Harvey]

One quick Google search for Audrey Burns and a passing reference: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:625771/FULLTEXT01.pdf

'The 40 WRENS in hut 7 were supervised by Audrey Burns'

Pete

[Chris Weddell]

Just took this from wiki for information on hut 7. I have a number of items from BP but I have never seen mail from hut 7 before.


Hut 7 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of Japanese naval codes such as JN4, JN11, JN40, and JN-25. The hut was headed by Hugh Foss who reported to Frank Birch, the head of Bletchley's Naval section.
Hut 7 supplied cryptanalysts and linguists to Bletchley's front line station the Far East Combined Bureau (FECB) at Hong Kong, then Singapore, then Anderson Station (Colombo, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka), then Allidina School in Kilindini, Kenya before moving back to Colombo.

[Peter Harvey]

Hi Nick,

See the following Naval Party 874, appears to have been a Combined Operations communications unit
attached to a higher echelon headquarters.

Actually a very interesting read http://www.relaysystem.co.uk/1943HenryHaylesandtheAssaultonSalerno2.pdf

Pete

[Nick Colley]

Crikey, Chris & Pete, I'm overwhelmed! Clearly your search skills are far superior to mine. It never occurred to me to Google the addressee - apparently a civilian. As for ferreting out that item from the chap in NP 874, well! What did you actually type into the search line?? Outstanding. Many thanks.

Yes, I eventually found G.V.Burns in one of the Navy Lists - Western Med. Works District, page 1966 of the December 1943 NL. He's down as an 'Esqr' ie a civilian, so I'm at a loss to account for his claiming the rank of Commander, RNVR.

Chris, yes I found that article on Wiki. No mention of the Wrens in Hut 7, though, is there? There are no female names in that list of personnel, are there. Very poor  :-[

I wonder if I can integrate all this information with the postal history interest in a write-up for the Journal. Fancy being co-authors?

Thanks again.

chrs
N

[Chris Weddell]

Nick,

        Very happy to help. Someone needs to look at some of this information on Wiki as it is very poor and not well researched.

Just looking at two of my books on BP there were Wrens in hut 7. Audrey  must of been very good at her job as a supervisor is a high up job. I cannot find any military record for her but many who worked at BP and also the S.O.E. are still classed as classified and you cannot get access to them yet.

G.V. is very well listed on the Navy list for many years he also had a navy pension so he held a rank. Do you want me to see if I can find out more about these two ????

[Nick Colley]

Sure, if the task takes your fancy, why not? The script I've just written will stand alone with the two loose ends (their respective ambiguous statuses), but it wouldn't do any harm to see if those loose ends can be tied off.

TVM
chrs
N