Anglo-Boer War / British Occupation of Former Italian Colonies / and Nyasaland Field Force: Nick Harris
- Nick Colley
- Aug 18
- 2 min read
Our member, Nick Harris paid us a visit on Saturday 13th June and we were treated to a marvellous display of nearly 400 pages of quite exceptional postal history material covering the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902, The British Occupation of the former Italian Colonies (BOFIC), The Nyasaland Field Force 1914-1918 and The Japanese Occupation of the Gilbert & Ellice Islands 1941-1945 (Civil Censorship).
Nick started his display by showing an extensive range of Rhodesian mail sent by the troopers under the command of Colonel Plumer whose task it was to relieve besieged Mafeking. This was followed by no less than 26 Mafeking siege mail covers ranging from the very early Kaffir mail to those covers smuggled out of Mafeking, by native runner by the established routes via both the South and north. Covers and used blocks were also shown of both the Baden Powell and Sergent Goodyear stamps. Also shown was an extensive display of items relating to besieged Ladysmith.
After lunch, Nick showed in excess of 100 pages of Boer POW covers from the overseas POW camps on St. Helena, Ceylon, Bermuda and India explaining the reasoning behind why in certain cases separate camps needed to be established for the Boer prisoners from the Transvaal and those from the Orange Free State.
This was followed by a excellent display of Nyasaland Field Force covers with at least one cover from each of the various FPO's which were established during the campaign.
A extensive range of BOFIC covers followed showing numerous censor cachets and labels used during the campaign from Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Eritrea, The Dodecanese Islands and Mogadishu. Also shown was a very good range of Registered Postal Stationary envelopes overprinted E.A.F or B.M.A. Somalia.
Nick finally concluded with a small but very interesting display covering censorship during the Second World War in the Gilbert & Ellice Islands.
The meeting concluded at about 4pm with a really marvellous day being experienced by all those who attended.
