P/W Middle East and P.O.W. E.A.C. cachets on the same cards.

[Chris Weddell]

Hi All

  Can anyone tell me why a boxed 'P/W MIDDLE EAST' and a 'P.O.W. E.A.C.' cachet would be on the same cover ?? I seem to have a few covers or cards like this. I am sure the answer is a simple one but I just can not find it.

Any help at all would be great. Thank you in advance.

                                                              Cheers

                                                                Chris  ???

[Chris Weddell]

Hi all

      One more scan showing the same thing on a letter card.

                                    Cheers

                                      Chris

[Ross Debenham]

From general observation this combination of cachets seem to be common on Prisoner of War cards and letters. It might be because at one stage of the war East African Command was amalgamated into Middle East Command for a period.

[Chris Weddell]

Ross

      Thank you.

              Cheers

              Chris

[Graham Mark]

The answer is a little more complicated.  On 31 Jan 41 a conference was held to determine the policy for dealing with PoW mails.  This came at a time when Italian PoWs were being considered for distribution to new holding countries.  Centralising all PoW mail censorship in UK was impractical and some Empire censorships were already under strain.
It was decided that A) all Pow censorship in the Eastern Hemisphere was to be in military hands, B) incoming letters for PoWs in the Eastern hemisphere (except UK) should be censored in Egypt by a military organisation controlled by a joint committee of the Adjutant General and Military Intelligence, C) all outgoing letters from PoWs should be censored at Army HQ in the country where the PoWs were detained.
This info is drawn from "History of the Postal and Telegraph Censorship Department 1938-1946", pub by the Home Office 1952, two vols, NA Kew ref DEFE1/333 and 334
It seems that PoW mail from East Africa (and possibly India) was routed via Egypt to Europe and so all the latters and cards picked up a censor chop from Egypt en route.
I hope this helps,  Graham

[Chris Weddell]

Graham

            Thank you very much for the answer it is of great help to me.

                                          Thanks

                                          Chris.

[Nick Guy]

May I ask a "Supplementary" on this, please?  Does the History quoted give any further information of why some East African POW material is censored P/W MIDDLE EAST and other P/W EAST AFRICA?  My material (which I tabulated in David Trapnell's thread MIDDLE EAST WW2 CENSOR HANDSTAMP USAGE) has some items with the one and some with the other pretty much throughout the whole period of Italians being held in East Africa.  Otherwise does the assumption that it simply reflects resourcing still seem most plausible?

Another assumption that would be good to see confirmed is that the East Africa censor(s) was based in Nairobi and the Middle East in Cairo?  It seems obvious, and tends to be assumed, but I've not seen a definitive citation for it.

Regards
Nick Guy

[Graham Mark]

Hello Nick, sorry to be slow in responding, I have been diverted to other matters.
"History" para 1377 - Kenya - Censorship was introduced on 1Sept39. HQ was Nairobi, other stations under HQ were at Mombasa, Kisumu and Kampala. [Tanganyika was a separate censorship]  There is no mention of PoW correspondence in this section nor in the section on Tanganyika.
Para 1500 - Egypt - PoW censorship was carried out by Military Authority under the War Office, not by the Anglo-Egyptian Censorship (which handled civil mails). Collaboration between the two censorship was close.  But because the PoW censorship in Egypt was under the control of the War Office there is nothing in the "History" about its activities.  Similarly as the PoW censorship in East Africa came under the same control the "History" is also silent on any details.
In the section I quoted from in a previous reply, para 353, where the new structure of the censorship for PoW mail in the eastern hemisphere was set out, the last sentence reads: " Postal and Telegraph Censorship therefore ceased to have any responsibility in the Middle East".
Looks like War Office records will have to be examined.
Graham

[Nick Guy]

Graham

Thank you for this

Nick

[dtrapnell]

Nick, I have just finished a book to be published by the Postal History Society under the title "Who goes there? The postal history of British POW camps in the Middle East in WW2". In it I begin by saying "Why did letters from Italy to Prisoners of War (POWs) in India in 1945 occasionally get censored in Cairo, 4500km from India? And why was POW mail from Kenya to Italy always treated thus?"
At the end of the book I explain that the Cairo office was opened to take POW mail off the hands of the already over-loaded civil & internee mail censorship office in Nairobi.
Hopefully the book will be published this year! I hope this helps.
Kind regards
David

[Nick Guy]

Hello David

Thanks for this -  I shall have to keep my eyes open for it.  I may have misunderstood one point - are you saying that the Cairo office only handled mail from POWs in East Africa.  I had always assumed (without checking, I confess, since it is outside my collecting interests) that it would also have been dealing with mail from Italian POWs from the Eritrean and Western Desert campaigns.

Nick

[dtrapnell]

Nick,
I am ashamed to say I have failed until now to see this question of yours. The P/W MIDDLE EAST handstamp[i] was applied only to POW mail[/i] from all over the Middle East and East Africa, including Palestine (but ony, of course, after it had been introduced!) My book will show that the MIDDLE EAST h/s was introduced in the spring of 1941.
I have never seen an example of the MIDDLE EAST handstamp on mail from the Somalia and Horn of Africa Campaign. That may be because the 100,000 POWs taken there (mostly I guess at the end of that campaign in November 1941) were sent to East and South  Africa.
There is a short paragraph about this in my monograph  [i]The postal history of Prisoner of war camps in India in WW2 and Indian Prisoners of War overseas[/i], published by the India Study Circle in 2016, page 6.
I hope this helps.
David.

[Nick Guy]

Hello David

Thanks for the clarification.  I had initially misread your comment about the Cairo office. 

I'm sure you are right that the POWs taken in Italian and British Somaliland and Ethiopia mostly landed up in East and Southern Africa or travelled though them (I am distinguishing Eritrea from Ethiopia and assuming you were including Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa since the two African Divisions from Kenya drove straight on from British Somaliland into Ethiopia).  Apart from that moving them to the rear, northward communications were poor with shipping in short supply and moving them there would make it more would have placed them nearer the Axis armies in North Africa.  This seems to have been done quite quickly - Weisbecker ([i]Camp Mail of Italian Prisoners of War & Civilian Internees in East Africa 1940-1947[/i]) lists no "definitive" POW camps in Italian Somaliland and only four each in British Somaliland and Ethiopia, all of which were cleared of POWs (as opposed to Civilian Internees) in 1944 whereas there was still a functioning POW camp in Mombasa in December 1946.  The only Italian forces not POW in East Africa after July 1941 were the 40 000 or so trapped in the Gondar enclave.  As the earliest "P/W MIDDLE EAST" markings dates recorded are May 1941 - though no doubt setting up the regular POW censorship was not a job that could be completed overnight - I suspect the scarcity of their use from former Italian or Italian occupied territories reflects the speed with which Italian nationals were being evacuated from those territories (for example, the first repatriation of Italian civilians to Italy took place on 2 April 1942 - nearly 18 months before the armistice).  Reducing Gondar - cut off and now remote from friendly forces - was treated as a low priority and left largely to the KAR who were not seen as suitable for service in North Africa, and waited until November, after the rainy season.

Weisbecker does show some covers from Ethiopian POW camps including two from May and June 1941, but I cannot see any illustrations of mail from either British or Italian Somaliland that has a P/W MIDDLE EAST or P/W EAST AFRICA marking.  My earliest of those markings - P/W EAST AFRICA - is on a letter datelined 12 Aug 1941 from a POW already giving his address as Camp 356, Nairobi.  I do have one item from Addis Ababa but it has military censor stamps and although it does not have any East African date stamp, the Italian backstamp is dated 29.8.41 so given the time POW mail took the writer may could have been in British territory before the P/W MIDDLE EAST markings were brought in.

Thank you again for your reply  - as you'll gather you've given me something to think about; though sadly I doubt I will ever be fortunate enough to come across any of the material  I am now aware of!

Nick Guy