Armée d'Orient censorship Salonika WW1

[Peter Gassmann]

Hello All
I've recently joined so please excuse if I ask something really stupid. My current main interest is censored mail from Salonika WW1. In particular, mail that bears censor marks from the Armée d'Orient. It turns out that in some cases there are items with an Armée d'Orient mark, tying a sealing label that looks like a British Army label, similar to the ones described by Firebrace. I was already in exchange with Chris Grimshaw about this, but now I'm wondering if other members do have similar looking items (actually any Armée d'Orient censored items) in their collections. I would be very interested in scans of front and back to expand my database on known items.

Attached is an example.

best regards, Peter

[Chris Grimshaw]

Hello Peter

Firstly welcome to the Society and secondly the Forum.

As you write we've been in touch and exchanged a lot of information.  For the benefit of members the Opened by Censor label Peter illustrates shows an imprint suggesting these were printed by the British Printing & Stationary department. 

A number of different imprints are recorded of which some show the printing date as this example does.  Shortly after the Armistice,  the on 14/11/18 a new printing was made with a print run of 10,000.  The wording was changed to read Passed by Censor.  Various printings were made until censorship ceased at midnight 15/16 October 1919.

As French censorship was also involved I'm wondering if the British Print Section also undertook work for the French.  Does anyone know is such a Department existed within the French command in the Orient.

Chris