British FPO D.S. No. 217

[Ross Debenham]

I attach a scan of a Registered Letter from as the registration sticker say FPO D.S. No. 217 to South Africa and routed through Cairo where it picked up the daily shuttle flight to South Africa. I was hoping that a member of the society could help me with what D.S. denotes, as I have not seen it previously.

[Chris Grimshaw]

Hello Ross

An interesting item, Totally outside my field however,

FPO D S,  Could this be a general Registration label, D.S. standing for Date stamp where the respective office would add their number as has been done in this case. 

Probably totally way off track but all I can think of.  Our WW2 friends can probably come up with a much better exclamation. 

Chris

[Ross Debenham]

Thanks Chris, I have seen some registration markers with the date stamp impressed on it.

[Michael Dobbs]

Ross

Chris is correct - D.S. stands for datestamp.  Usually in WW2 and the post-war period it would be the datestamp number used to cancel the registered envelope.  This can either be written in (common practice in both WW2 and post war periods) or a rubber cachet of the FPO datestamp number.  In the early post-WW2 period in Germany one can also find single or double digit numeral cachets which represented the BAOR postal indicator number and later still a series of cachets of a double digit number preceeded by the letters BP (thought to indicate British Post).  I believe that I posted some illustrations of these during the "Cover of the day" period.  Other cachets that can be found on registration labels are those of the office designation (e.g. S.316, etc).

Regards, Mike

[Ross Debenham]

Thanks Mike.