General Discussion

Team

I mentioned US Forces on the Western Front in an earlier post.

I've since commenced a trawl of all our Newsletter/Journals which are online, Starting at No 1, Censorship gets very little mention in the early days.

However I found the article shown below. Like many of the early articles no author shown, I suspect the Editor wrote much of the Newsletter.

FPHS Newsletter No.71 January/ February 1965

Start of Article

BRITISH ARMY DATESTAMPS AND CENSOR MARKS ON A.E.F.COVERS 1918...... .

Certain British Army Post Office and Field Post Office datestamps of the First World War are recorded by Raynor as having been allotted, or at any rate used by the United States Army in France.

They are; Double-ring Field Post Office 4 K to 24 K inclusive and Army Post Office RK 7

No mention has been noted previously of the use of British Army censor marks by the U.S .Army. Covers from American soldiers which bear British markings are by no means common in Britain, though they may well be more so in the United States. An enquiry amongst those members seriously collecting British Army markings of WWI at a recent London meeting elicited the fact that most, if not all of them had not come across any of these "K" datestamps on U.S. soldiers' letters. Having obtained a number of such covers recently (from an American source), it seems worthwhile putting on record the postal and censor markings found on them.

They are mostly American YMCA envelopes, or envelopes of the brown, rather flimsy paper commonly used by American soldiers at this period, and are endorsed by hand in the usual way with the sender's name and "A.E.F.", "TJ.S. Infantry", /etc.,- and are censored in manuscript by the officer concerned "Censored (signature) 1st.Lt.Inf." or similar.

The datestamps noted are: "K" series;

The datestamps listed as "Others" would not, one imagines, have ever been allotted to American units, but were struck on letters posted through British Army post offices for convenience, or by chance. It will be noted that in some instances the month and day are reversed, month first, which is the usual practice in the United States and Canada.

The censor stamps noted are, all of the upright rectangular Crown/Passed/ By/Censor/ho./... type currently in use by the British Army in France.

No.                              With datestamp

6630                            20 K

6647                            S 51

6654                            RK 4 - 10 K

The sequence of the numbers suggests that censor stamps in the 5,000 and 6,000 series may have allotted to American units, although at the period covered by the bulk of the dates, the U.S. Army in France already had its own censor stamps.

In passing, it may be noted that no previous record appears to exist of the datestamps Army Post Office RX 2 and RK 4 in use, although RK 4 is noted in the GP0 records as having been issued on 14-5-18. 'Perhaps one of our American members can give us the story behind such British markings on his countrymen's mail.

End of Article.

Created by copy & paste with editing, plus screen shots for the two tables.

Currently I have one cover I can confirm as US Material. Can anyone help. Currently I treat this article as a 'Report' Not a 'Record' until I can confirm the data. Chris