Allied troops, P.O.W. and workers in Great Britain during WW2.
Good morning! Today I am posting a request for information regarding mail from Eire to Irish citizens serving in the British Forces. I have yet to find a cover with a service person's number on it where I can say for sure that person was an Irish citizen at the time. I have two near misses but no definite tie-ups. Did family and friends use a service number, name and rank when sending? Or was there and unwritten law (or official ruling) that made it taboo?
There were 60,000 Irish citizens who served in the British Forces and I have found a reference where citizens were eventually pardoned but could not open the article. What was the situation?
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Today it is the turn of the Canadians. I have only put the Army covers up, I will cover the navy and the air force in the defence of Great Britain and the 'Battle of the Atlantic'.
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More Canada.
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Today - Our wartime guests.
These were mainly German and Italian but we also had Russian Cassocks who I used to go and watch perform with their horses, performing tricks and showing off their skill with lance sword. I saw many a Mangel(wurzel) topped by a Russian sword! Unfortunately I have never seen any philatelic material or ephemera related to them. Enough to say that most were murdered when they were forced to return to the USSR.
Just after the war there was a huge building project in my home town of Stratford on Avon. It was there that I met many Italian POW. They comprised most of the work force on the building site. We as kids would take them apples and damsons and they would tell us that they were not POW but our allies. Despite this they still wore the yellow patches on their khaki uniforms. We kids said it was so the guards could have something to aim at if they tried to run away, this despite the fact that I don't remember seeing any guards. We also benefitted by their presence at Christmas and on birthdays for to make extra cash they made toys from anything they could get their hands on, which was mainly the the planks that lined the scaffolding. From pieces of those planks they fashioned anything from trollies and toy elephants with swinging trunks to birds that bowed and drank water (I never did work out how they worked). Many of those POW stayed on until about 1949 as workers, mainly on the land where I picked potatoes and peas alongside them, Many were to stay forever.
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POW continued.
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I have come to the end of Wartime visitors to Great Britain, I now want to show what was happening in the country as a whole. I intend to show a few pages everyday to build up the general picture on the 'Home Front'. Any comments and/or covers, ephemera etc will be greatly appreciated.
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To continue with my Great Britain World War II... (there is nothing stopping you opening up a corner for your own collecting interests). Today I am showing the occupation of the Channel Islands and Britain preparing for the coming onslaught.
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What an amazing write-up Jamie. Please keep them coming... It must have taken an awful long time to write it up, scan the photos and do the research. Is there a book on the subject?
Not to my knowledge, but there are odd bits and pieces where I glean my information from, The Forces Postal History Society and the Internet. Thank you for the interest I will carry on with 5 pages a day if only for you!
Thanks Jamie, hoping to reciprocate one day with more Cape of Good Hope Material. I have been busy rewriting and writing the display. I am on page 450, but still not ready for public consumption.
Your posts are my internet first port of call every day, as I am so tired of reading of "trumpian" news.
Do you have any write-up on machine cancellers of the United Kingdom? I have a large number of these and I am contemplating to write them up after the CGH stuff.