Post by connie on Sept 17, 2014 16:47:48 GMT -5
(click to enlarge)
Letters saved by family have history even in their envelope.
An envelope being sold on line, mainly for the 6cent airmail stamp of the day carried 106th infantry Division history.
Of course that long number after the soldier's rank and name was his serial number. This is useful in doing research.
Usually wartime letters from soldiers did not carry the division number, just a unit within a division. I have some with 590 FA BN on them. (590th Field Artillery Battalion). These unit numbers are unique. So if I didn't know that this battalion was a part of the 106th Infantry division, a quick web search for that unit would reveal that it was.
In the case of the attached envelope photo, since the unit was a division headquarters unit, the actual division number is there.
APO 443 care of Post Master NY, NY will be a familiar Army Post Office Number to anyone who served in the 106th Infantry Division in the ETO. In fact when the men of the 106th Infantry Division left Camp Atterbury in Indiana, they were assigned this mailing address. The men who wrote home from the secret embarkation camp (Camp Myles Standish in Massachusetts) used this address.
The US Army postmark tells more. The attached envelope has a postmark of February 3. Even without the contents of the envelope, a little research can tell you where sender probably was at the time he wrote this letter.
Of course at this time the postmark would have been a U.S. Army Postmark. But not all of them were. My father sailed with the last of the division's troops aboard the Wakefield. A shipboard letter written on November 12 and bearing the same airmail 6 cent airmail stamp seen on the attached envelope was not postmarked until December 9. It does not say US Army but does say New York, NY (and Church something...). It is apparent that shipboard letters from this journey (except those sent V-Mail) made the return trip to the states aboard a boat not a plane and were postmarked there. Since my mother wrote dates received on the back of the envelopes, I can tell you for certain that letters written in England and mailed airmail did indeed beat the shipboard letters back to their stateside destination.
Letters from my father written immediately before his field artillery unit crossed the channel from England to France aboard a US Navy LST bore a US Navy postmark.
The fact that there was a stamp on this letter probably announces that by now this soldier had learned that that was the best way to get a letter home in a timely fashion. American soldiers on overseas wartime duty did have a slow alternative. They had wartime franking privileges. They could simply write "free" in the place you would normally place a stamp. (I know this was also true for soldiers in the Vietnam War. Is it true today?)
Censor's Seal and signature That "passed by army examiner" toward the bottom left tells you the mail passed censorship. Even if you didn't have a clear date on the postmark or knew nothing of the unit's history, it would tell you that we were at war. Censorship was lifted in the ETO shortly after VE Day. The signature in the lower left hand corner is the signature of the superior who did the censorship of this piece of mail. In this case it gives you the name of an officer in 106th Infantry Division's HQ.
The Envelope OK this one falls more in the obsessive curiosity arena for me. But the envelope is obviously nice stationery. I'm guessing that the letter may have been on matching paper. This only catches my eye because at some point during his stay in England, Dad shifted to something similar to this, though not identical. Since prior to the stationery switch he had not had time to get out of camp much, I'm guessing it was something acquired in the PX when his own paper supply ran low. If anyone has any experience with what was available at a PX and when, you may help answer the strange questions that hit my mind. For the attached envelope photo, I'm thinking that early February may have been a strange time for access to PX shopping. So maybe this stationery was something sent from home (or maybe HQ had access to such things...?) Did you see/ use paper like this used in the ETO? Do you know anything about its origins?
The matching paper inside Dad's similar envelope was narrow like standard stationery, but was longer than the U.S. stationery I'm accustomed to. Since Dad was stationed at a British Military Camp in England (with a PX), I wondered if it might be British sized stationery that he used at that time...
Anyway, the point is that even an envelope can fill in history gaps (and raise questions which may or may not have answers).
If you have envelope wisdom to add, please post!
