Journal Articles Archive - Page 19 of 231 - Channel Islands Specialists’ Society

Early mail from Jersey to Portugal – an update

Following on from my article in the previous edition of Les Iles Normandes I have recently acquired another item in this correspondence. This was posted in Jersey on 7 March 1865 and is illustrated above as Fig. 5. In my previous article I illustrated an underpaid cover posted in November 1866 shortly after the rate had increased from 4d to 6d. Fig 5 shows an entire posted in 1865 at the then correct rate of 4d. The packet ship rate to Portugal was 4d per ¼oz. between July 1859 and July 1866. This was forwarded via London where a transit datestamp for 9 March was applied in red. It was then routed to Southampton from where the letter was taken by packet ship to Lisbon. Fig 5a shows the transit datestamp for Lisbon, dated 13 March 1865. However, I believe this letter weighed over ¼ oz and was underpaid. The 80 (Reis) handstamp was a surcharge mark applied in Lisbon. The letter was then forwarded to Oporto where it received a datestamp for 14 March Fig. 5b.

The Irish Legation in Paris at 8 Place Vendome, Paris

Paris was occupied on 14th June 1940, one month after the German Wehrmacht had stormed into France. Eight days later, France signed an armistice, and a puppet French state was set up in Vichy. The German authorities immediately ordered all foreign diplomats to leave Paris and so the official Irish Legation duly followed the French government to Vichy.

Minister for Ireland,

Count Gerald O’Kelly de Gallagh et Tycooly

A “likeable rogue” and renegade, Count Gerald O’Kelly de Gallagh et Tycooly, from Tipperary, had been involved with setting up the first Irish diplomatic mission in Paris in 1919 and was minister plenipotentiary in Paris from 1929 until 1935, when he was forced from his post as part of a shabby De Valera / Sien Féin purge of pro Anglo-Irish Treaty members of the diplomatic corps.

To soften the blow, Count O’Kelly was given the title “special counsellor” and it was under this ambiguous, semi-official designation that he remained in Paris during the early part of the Occupation to represent Irish interests in Paris and the occupied territories of France when the official members of the Irish Legation moved to Vichy.

Count O’Kelly’s Consular Services

Defying German and Vichy French instructions, Count O’Kelly ran his “consular services” out of the premises of his wine company, Vendôme Vines, at 8 Place Vendome. He issued Irish passports to Irish people with British passports, and regularly visited the appalling Internment camp for British civilians at Besançon to liberate any Irish citizens wrongly incarcerated.

The Legation d’Irlande Consular Mail Service – July 1940 to mid 1941.

Count O’Kelly also ran a Consular Mail Servicefor correspondents in Ireland who thought it safer to send messages intended for the occupied parts of France and the occupied Channel Islands, via the Paris Legation d’Irlande, rather than direct through the post.

When Count O’Kelly de Gallagh maintained his Consular mail service, he endorsed the back of the envelopes with a name for the correspondence and the address of his quasi “Legation d’Irlande” at 8 Place Vendome.

A Legation d’Irlande Consular envelope with a message from Ireland, postmarked on 21 February 1941 with a Paris machine cancel and addressed to Mons. W.H. Darby, Ommaroo Hotel, has been redirected to 29 Pierson Rd.

The name on the back of the envelope identifying the correspondence is “d’Esterre Darby”

and the return address is

the Legation d’Irlande.

Back of the envelope:

Sent from the

Legation d’Irlande,

8 Place Vendome

Paris

The envelope has been censored and sealed in Paris with a dumb brown tape and red Dienststielle Feldpost

Nr. 21476 B censor cachet.

Count O’Kelly’s Continuing Mail Service from mid 1941 to ?

The front of a Count O’Kelly Consular envelope (no longer Legation d’Irlande) with a message from Ireland, postmarked on 9 JUIL 41 with a Paris machine cancel. (Note inverted year slug!)

Count O’Kelly was left to his own devices, working unhindered until mid 1941 when the Germans finally insisted that his “Paris Legation d’Irlande” should be shut, but there is evidence that he continued his mail service between Ireland and the Channel Islands endorsing envelopes with his own name and address rather than “Legation d’Irlande” as illustrated by this letter.

The back of the envelope sent to Jersey on 9 July 1941, after Count O’Kelly was forced to close down his Paris Legation d’Irlande, bears similar endorsements as previous Legation envelopes, but now his name replaces the “Legation d’Irlande” title in the address:

de Mons. H. d’Esterre Darby

c/o Le Comte O’Kelly de Gallagh

8 Place Vendome 8 Paris.

This letter reached Jersey without encountering German censorship; perhaps this was because it no longer carried the endorsement “Legation d’Irlande”.

The Conundrum of the correspondence name on backs of both letters.

Count O’Kelly has endorsed both letters “d’Esterre Darby” even though only the addressee of the first envelope is a Darby family member, W.H. Darby, while the second is Miss J. Donchex; both living at 29 Pierson Rd. St Helier. Sir Henry D’Esterre Darby was an Admiral in the Royal Navy (1750-1823) at the time of Nelson, living at Leap Castle, Roscrea, the family home since 1649. No Darby family member used the name “d’Esterre” in the 20th Century and the family moved to England in 1922 after Leap castle was burnt down. I wonder if the correspondent’s name on the back of the envelope is a code of the sender, or Count O’Kelly de Gallagh’s attempt to confuse the Germans.

Count O’Kelly’s other War Work

Count O’Kelly was pro-British even though at least 70% of his wine clients were Germans, including Herman Goëring!

He ran an escape route to Spain for downed British airmen, fed information to Britain via the French Resistance, and held in safekeeping for the duration, James Joyce’s papers when he fled France in 1940 for Zurich.

Postscript

I displayed the two covers at the Society meeting on 11^th February 2023, and ‘predictably’, fellow member Gerald Marriner stated that he also had a Paris Legation d’Irlande envelope with contents, addressed to Guernsey. He kindly sent me scans of the envelope and letter which is illustrated below.

The envelope is an official Irish Legation envelope imprinted with the title “ÉIRE”.

It is addressed to Guernsey and has been postmarked with a Paris machine cancel dated 10.1.1941.

The back of the envelope has no endorsement by Count O’Kelly.

It bears the smudged end of the machine cancel and a double circle GUERNSEY receiving postmark dated 21 FE 41 indicating that it took six weeks to travel from Paris to Guernsey!

The envelope displays no German censorship although glue marks indicate it may have been opened and resealed.

The contents of the Irish Legation envelope sent to Guernsey.

A typed letter from Count G. O’Kelly de Gallagh

giving his titles

Minister Plenipotentiary

Special Counseller

And the address:

LEGATION D’IRLANDE.

Chancellerie Provisoire

8, Place Vendome,

Paris.

This letter dated, Paris 8^th Jan. 1941, states that “a request for news concerning you has reached the Legation from Dublin”; this was at a time when all correspondence from Dublin should have been routed through the official Irish Legation in Vichy.

Both Gerald and I would be interested to know if any members have any other Irish Legation messages sent via Paris or Vichy to the Channel Islands.

May 1945 Liberation Correspondence Guernsey to Bermuda

A colleague in the Postage Due Mail Study Group based in Bermuda, Horst Augustinovic, forwarded to me copies of correspondence written in the days just before Liberation sent from Guernsey to Bermuda on 9^th May 1945. He thought that the covers were historically interesting.

His guess is that the sender – J. Robin of 106, Victoria Road, Guernsey – may have worked in Bermuda before the war as he seemingly knew several people in St. George’s.

There are three addressees. Figures 1, 1a and 1b relate to the Roberts family, a prominent St. George’s family, having been both store owners and mayors. Figures 2, 2a and 2c concern the Fox family: Fox is a fairly common name in the East End of Bermuda and Gracie obviously worked for the Gosling liquor store (Horst suggests maybe the writer did too). Figure 3 is addressed to Dr. Parker, who Horst thinks must have been his local doctor.

Unfortunately there are no backstamps on the covers, so it is not possible to establish an arrival date in Bermuda.

Jersey – Weiterlauf durch Kriegsverhältnisse verhindert (Forwarding prevented by wartime conditions): Very late fieldpost item dating from 22 March 1945

After the fall of St. Malo on 18 August 1944 German troops on the Channel Islands were completely cut off from the rest of their forces in France.

This new war situation also had its effect on postal links, which for a while came to a complete halt. It was only during the night of 7/8 October 1944 that the first supply flight arrived on Guernsey, a plane belonging to Transportgruppe 30 (TG 30). Because the airport on Guernsey was better equipped than its counterpart on Jersey planes heading for the Channel Islands landed on Guernsey.

Till the end of the war more than twenty of these supply flights were carried out by the Germans. Some of these flights are well documented whereas information about others is rather vague. Leopold Mayr and Michael Wieneke state twenty-three supply flights on pages 138/139 in their handbook “KANALINSELN – Postgeschichtliches Handbuch zur Deutschen Besetzung 1940 – 1945. According to that list the last plane landed on Guernsey during the night of 9/10 April 1945.

Fieldpost was flown in and out whenever possible to boost the morale of the troops. Flown-out fieldpost items are offered on the market from time to time and every specialist collector will have his or her example in his or her collection. Flown-in items are much scarcer and the number of items that have come to light so far might be well under 20.

Hitherto little was known about the final period of these supply flights. In March 1945 the planes of TG 30 could no longer use their home base near Frankfurt/Main because of the approaching American troops. The sub-unit of TG 30 which was responsible for the Channel Islands and the other German fortresses along the French coastline were moved to Reichenberg near Bad Schussenried in southern Germany. Specialists think that the airfield in Reichenberg was used for the two final supply flights.

We know that one plane coming from Guernsey landed between 25 March 1945 and 1 April 1945. Elderly local people from Schussenried remembered the service on Easter Sunday (1 April 1945) in their church, which was richly decorated with flowers from the Channel Islands.

And it is here that the illustrated item plays its part. A German navy sailor, a member of the Jersey harbour protection flotilla (fieldpost number 28529 C), writes a letter (unfortunately the content is lost) to his family in Egern (today part of Rottach-Egern) on Lake Tegernsee south of Munich.

The envelope was stamped on 22 March 1945 at the German fieldpost office in St. Helier on Jersey (see the characteristic letter g). From there the letter was carried on board a ship to Guernsey. However, there was no schedule for a daily service. The weather had to be okay and also Allied activities turned the passage into a dangerous adventure with German boats only running during the night. So the exact arrival date of the letter in Guernsey is unclear.

If the illustrated letter above had arrived in Schussenried by Easter the letter would have been delivered to Egern via Ulm, Augsburg and Munich. It is known that postal links between Munich and the Tegernsee area remained intact until about mid-April 1945.

On the front the illustrated cover bears the boxed instructional cachet “Weiterlauf durch/Kriegsverhȁltnisse/verhindert” (free translation: “Forwarding prevented by wartime conditions”) which is very rare.

So the cover was held back somewhere on the route between Schussenried and Egern on Tegernsee because the final destination could no longer be reached.

This instructional cachet was completely unknown in connection with the Channel Islands. These letters were delivered to the addressees only after the war.

Thus we may well assume that the illustrated item was flown out on the very last (!) supply flight, which landed in Reichenberg on 16 April 1945. A plane had stopped on Guernsey on its way home from La Rochelle, one of the German fortresses on the French coast. Because La Rochelle for the Germans was a far-out fortress supply planes had to make a stop on Guernsey in either direction in order to fill their tanks with fuel. We knew that on 10 April 1945 one plane landed on Guernsey on its way out to La Rochelle, but we had no evidence that the same plane also landed on Guernsey on its way back to Reichenberg. The plane landed in Reichenberg during the night of 15/16 April 1945. For a long time specialist collectors were not sure about this last supply flight, but now we know!

For the relatives in Germany it must have been a pity that the letter did not reach them in time, but for our research the letter is a precious gift. We do not know exactly where the instructional cachet was struck, probably at a Munich office.

CISS Spring 2023 Auction Report

This general auction, with over 730 Lots, covered early Postal History, WW1, Occupation (Postal History, Bisects, stamps, Red Cross messages, Feldpost, Internee and POW Mail), Brechou, Jethou, Herm as well as modern Postal History and stamps and a wide range of postcards. The reserves were from £3 to £350 and attracted over 94 bidders, both postal and in the room at the regional meeting in Guernsey. It generated sales of £14,910. Many of the Lots sold below £20, however, for some Lots bidding was strong such was the rarity of some of the material on offer and over 75% of the Lots were sold.

The highlights were:

Postal History

A cover from Jersey to Scotland with a concave Jersey handstamp sold for £220 (NS21001) and a wrapper from Jersey to London with a 3 margin Penny Black cancelled with the Jersey Maltese Cross went for £260. (NS21009).

An 1856 cover from Jersey to Dublin with an undated Beaumont date stamp sold for £300. (NS210144) and an 1870 scarce Ballon Monte from Paris to Jersey sold for £300. (NS21020).

Various postal markings from both Guernsey and Jersey sold for modest prices such as a fine Guernsey “324” single obliterator with 2 bars above and below the “324” sold for £28. (NS21043).

WW1 material sold well. One of the highlights was a 1918 cover sent from Guernsey to France with the French Sea Plane Base cancel which attracted many bids and went for £220 (NS21104).

As usual the Occupation material attracted a large number of bids with virtually all Lots being sold with many prices realised being close to the reserves. An unusual Guernsey cover dated 26^th August 1940 was addressed to the British Vice Consul in America, no doubt hoping that the Germans would allow such a cover to be delivered to a neutral country. However it was refused with ‘No service’ and a ‘Return to Sender’ cachet applied. It sold for £150 (NS212141).

A very rare German propaganda postcard published in the Channel Islands showing an “Inflight view of a German fighter aircraft flying over the cliffs of Guernsey during the Battle of Britain” sold for £140 (NS21511). Three Essays were in the sale; two ungummed Jersey 1d Arms, a pair and block of four sold for £130 and £220 respectively (NS21228 & NS21229). A half size essay of the ½d Jersey Views sold for £350 (NS21248).

In this sale we had a range of Occupation Ephemera such as ration books from Jersey and Guernsey, all selling for under £10 each. (NS21296)

Red Cross

In the Red Cross section of the auction was a range of message forms, Bradshaw cards and Red Cross envelopes which sold for modest prices such as a message form from the British Union Hotel in Jersey to a Private Leverdier in Belfast, Northern Ireland which sold for £8 (NS21276)

Fortress Period

A very rare radio message card from the Islands dated 10 DEC 1944 inscribed “Obercommando der Kanalinsen” imprint and with a machine cancel for Wilhelmshaven sold for £275 (NS21698). A Feldpost November 1944 cover from Winterbach (Saar) addressed to the Comradeship Service West, Group PK, Broadcasting House, Berlin went for £150 (NS21699).

Post 1945 Postal History and Stamps

A Guernsey 1969 3d definitive with the rare inverted block CA watermark sold for £350 (NS21377) and a complete Guernsey 4/- booklet with a 4d pane missing the emerald stem sold for £160 (NS21384).

The sale included a wide range of Channel Aviation postal history, First Flight covers and ephemera all of which sold well, again, for modest prices, such as a supplement of the Guernsey Star newspaper on the opening of Guernsey Airport at £12 (NS21418) and four photographs from the Jersey Post of the opening of the Jersey Airport went for £28 (NS21416)

The Smaller Islands

Material from Herm, Jethou and Brechou featured. A complete sheet of the Herm 1/- Pigeon Post stamps, fine used sold for £80 (NS21437). Jethou had a range of material including full sheets such as the 1960 4d definitive which went for £50 (NS21488).

A lovely collection of Brechou stamps and covers from 1969 to 2103 sold for £320.

Postcards

Another wide range of postcards from all the Islands including LLs and Allix cards were featured. The highlight of this section was a very rare postally used photographic card of Les Marais Station in Jersey and a black and white photo of it. The station’s name was later changed to Fauvic. It attracted some very competitive bidding and sold for £220. (NS21588).

Coloured Allix cards are always popular with an unused card No. 8 of Plemont selling for £95 (NS21567) and an unused card No.162 of the Entrance to St. Owen’s Mas sold for £95 (NS21581).

A Guernsey postally used LL dark sepia card No. 38 of the ‘Arrival of the Boat from England’ sold for £34 (NS21612)

The full lists of the prices realised for the auction can be found in the member’s section of the CISS website under Auction Archive along with the descriptions and images.

Rate query on entire letter of 1809 from Guernsey to Poole

I have recently acquired an entire letter sent on June 5, 1809 from Guernsey to Poole. On the front of the cover one sees the handwritten postage entry 1/6d in black ink and when I calculate the postage I get a total of 1/7d. I referred this to Alan Moorcroft who quickly responded with the answer that he suspected the letter did not go via London as we now know it has no London datestamp on the reverse side. Thus it would have travelled from Weymouth to Blandford where there was a cross road to Poole, an inland distance from Weymouth of 40 miles = 6d plus 3d packet to Weymouth = 9d. Assuming it was a double letter the rate of 1/6d is solved.

Alan also writes…..to calculate the postage charge on mail sent prior to 5^th December 1839 (Uniform postage) one needs to know the distance the letter was actually carried until 1838 when the rule changed to the shortest distance. This is usually easy if the letter went along the same post road. However, when mail was sent via a cross post road then the calculation has to be from the town the letter was posted to the place the letter was transferred to another post road for it to reach its destination. As this letter bears no London datestamp it is almost 100% certain that it went via a cross post. Mail posted from Weymouth was sent to Shaftsbury to join the Western Road to London. This route passed through Dorchester and Blandford. A cross post operated from Blandford to Poole. Thus one can calculate the route this letter took: Weymouth to Blandford 24 miles and Blandford to Poole 13 miles making a total of 37 miles. This was charged postage in the rate band 30 to 50 miles 1805 – 1812 rates 6d.

Reference. The Western Road in Robertson Great Britain Post Roads, Post Towns page 10 and Paterson’s Roads and principal Cross Roads.

A late 19c Advertising envelope

Just before departing on a cruise to the West Indies and back before the last Christmas and New Year I was pleased to obtain this attractive envelope used by Jersey Wine Merchants DECOUR – BOISGARD & Cie trading at No.2, Sand Street, in St Helier, Jersey in the late 19c.

Addressed to Paris, France, the letter has been carried to Southampton where a 1887 QV 2½d purple on blue Jubilee stamp has been added and cancelled by a SOUTHAMPTON double circle datestamp on the 8^th November 1899. There are no backstamps on the reverse. A scarce letter.

Postcard from Sylt Concentration Camp, Alderney

The notorious Camp ‘SYLT’ in Alderney was an outpost of the concentration camp Hamburg-Neuengamme. The guards of this camp were members of SS Construction Brigade 1 and this unit was stationed in Dusseldorf prior to its transfer to Alderney.

Mail to and from the inmates of this camp was not conveyed direct. The mail from the prisoners had to be written on the standard printed forms, cards and folded letters of the concentration camp Neuengamme and was then taken from Alderney without any postage or postal markings. Firstly the mail went to the Concentration Camp at Neuengamme close to Hamburg. At the Camp the mail was censored and then posted to the addressees from the post office at Hamburg. The families of the prisoners only knew the address of Camp Neuengamme and the actual place where the prisoner was incarcerated was unknown to the families.

Illustrated is a postcard to Germany from the Alderney concentration camp

Sylt sent by a prisoner named Wilhem Becker. The message was written on

a form from the concentration camp Hamburg-Neuengamme and was cancelled by a civilian canceller from the post office of Hamburg-Berge- Dorf dated 24 April 1944. The name of the prisoner, Wilhem Becker, is known to Michael Wieneke and he was one of the post-war witnesses in Jersey and was mentioned in different post-war police interrogations.

Mail into Camp Sylt is unknown and most likely does not exist. Michael Wieneke was told by a former prisoner of Sylt-Camp (named Otto Spehr) that all mail which was received at the camp was collected by the guards and destroyed. Camp Sylt was ‘cleaned up’ just prior to D-Day and the prisoners were transferred via Guernsey to France and later on to Belgium.

Otto Spehr was taken from Alderney to Belgium from where he escaped. He was taken to England where he worked for Soldatensender Calais (Soldier’s Radio Calais), which was a ‘black’ propaganda station broadcasting in German into Germany.

Soldatensender Calais operated from 6pm local time to dawn. Unlike its predecessor, Gustav Siegfried Eins, the programmes were live from the purposely-built broadcast studio at Milton Bryan, Bedfordshire.

The method of propaganda used by the Soldatensender Calais was described by Sefton Delmer, its creator, in his book Black Boomerang, as “cover, cover, dirt, cover, dirt”; that is, using good music and providing coverage of sports and other events of interest to a German serviceman, the station made that listener receptive to propaganda items aimed at decreasing morale. An example was a warning of confidence men swindling German soldiers being transferred from France to the Russian front. This approach could be compared to those used by Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally, without the heavy-handiness of the Axis programmes. Soldatensender Calais, as part of its cover, relayed speeches by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi officials.

During the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, Soldatensender Calais broadcast information that was intended to impress German intelligence officers that the invasion area was wider than it actually was. After the Pas de Calais area was overrun, the station changed its callsign to Soldatensender West.
Soldatensender’s broadcast was repeated in print the next day in the NACHRICHTEN FȔR DIE TRUPPE air-dropped newspaper for German troops

St. Owens, Jersey 1904 Registered Letter

I have recently acquired a most attractive and early registered letter from this country Sub-Office which I show below.

It is a 3d brown registered stationery envelope which has been uprated by the addition of KEVII ½d and 1d definitive stamps to make up the 4½d rate and it is addressed to Fleurier in Switzerland. Each of the three postage stamps has been cancelled by the Jersey registered oval datestamp with alongside, clear examples of the 22mm ST. OWENS single circle datestamp with code C inserted for the 14^th March 1904.

Routed through London, it shows a faint registered “hooded circle” in violet on the front of the cover for the 16^th March 1904.

The reverse of the cover on the next page shows again, an oval REGISTERED datestamp and a complete FLEURIER single circle datestamp for the 17^th March 1904 used as an arrival mark.

A very well marked and attractive cover from this office. Can any member report a similar example please

Eight Copies of the Jersey Evening Post of June and July 1944

In 2022 I found this interesting lot in a German auction that consisted of 8 copies of the Jersey Evening Post newspaper that had been sent by the subscription department of the newspaper, via the German Feldpost, to a Luftwaffe doctor working in a specialist Luftwaffe hospital in Kitzbühel, Austria. The doctor must have held a paid subscription to the Jersey Evening Post during the war years.

Each of the newspapers is contained within a newspaper wrapper label that bears a Jersey Feldpost postmark with the code letter ‘g’. The date of each postmark corresponds with the date of its newspaper. Only one of the newspapers has been removed from its wrapper for display; the other seven have never been opened.

The newspaper label for the Evening Post of 12 June 1944 has the Jersey FELDPOST postmark with code ‘g’, dated 13.6 44, and is addressed to: Dr. Schlaegel, Lw.-Kurlazarett, (12b) Kitzbühel.

The Hospital

Lw.-Kurlazarett, (12b) Kitzbühel was a specialist hospital of the Luftwaffe situated 64 km SW of Salzburg in the west of Austria. In the fall of 1944, it was assigned a number and became Lw.-Kurlazarett 1/VII.

These specialist hospitals were ‘Luftwaffe Curative Treatment Hospitals’ devoted to using the Sulphur water, mineral water, hot springs, spa approach to treatment rather than the more modern scientific medical approach. The Luftwaffe’s hospital network averaged about 10 of these hospitals during the wartime years.

The Newspapers

Dr. Schlaegel’s newspapers are from a period a week after the D-Day landings up to 26 July 1944 when it is probable that the Feldpost in Jersey could no longer accept them. It is not known for how long the Evening Post continued to try and fulfill the subscription and post the newspapers or if these were indeed the last ones to leave the island.

The newspapers raise many interesting questions:

Why did Dr. Schlaegel have a regular subscription to the Jersey Evening Post?

Had the doctor been posted to Jersey at some time during the war or did he have other connections with Jersey?

Did Dr. Schlaegel ever receive these eight newspapers, and if he did, why were they never opened?

The newspapers seem to have left Jersey, but did they arrive at the hospital or were they lost on route? One appears to have a receiving date stamp applied in red.

Where have the newspapers been for the last 79 years and why have they appeared in Germany now? (One has childlike colouring of the postmark so it may have been in a family home at some time.)

Postscript

I displayed the newspapers in the ‘Three Sheets to Tell a Story’ competition, for members who attended the Market Harborough weekend meeting in April 2022. After a very convivial dinner on the Saturday night at which Gavin Wood plied me with quantities of wine, the newspapers now reside in his collection.