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Joint meeting with OPAL This joint meeting with the Oriental Philatelic Association of London (OPAL) brought together thirteen people of the two societies of which three were members of both. Ostensibly the meeting was billed as Palestine but some of those displaying were not aware of this so if some of the displays reported here seem not to be in the right area that's the reason. Nevertheless this did not detract in any way to the day and a very enjoyable and informative time was had by all. Bash Orhan opened with Italian post offices in the Ottoman Empire 1908-23, also covering the Turkish-Italian war of 1911/1912. The Italians had demanded that they be allowed to open post offices; this was at first refused but the Turks relented following a show of force by the Italian Navy. Then he showed Italian ships in Abyssinia including the "San Mario". Bash ended with the Italian occupation in Turkey after WWI with PM15 on the Bosphorus in 1919. Jim Scannell continued with censored mail of Persia (Iraq)/Palestine of WWII displaying 17 sheets - this covered British, Russian and Anglo-Russian Persian censors. Kemal Giray then showed two Health Passports of the sanitary agency in Jaffa one from 1840 and the other 1845. Mike Goodman had nine sheets of Indian FPOs from the British occupation after the WWI. Among them were FPO 5, 12, 20, 31, 68, 79, 83, 117 and 310. In a later display he showed more WWI FPOs of the SZ types including SZ13 from the Royal Flying School; Heliopolis, SZ27 from a casualty clearing station and other SZ skeleton types. Keith Tranmer keeping to the Palestine theme had Turkish WWI FPOs 76 and 61, the Temporary Gaza cancellation. He also showed a cover from the Austrian 'Orient Corps' - the Corps that never was - prepared but did not reach Palestine and never got beyond Belgrade. There was a cover from an Austrian Officer using the Turkish FPO 44 on the fall back to Damascus. The Australian Light Horse were represented, the 2nd. and 3rd Light horse including the rare oval FPO on piece. Keith supported his display with a montage of photographs and covers (mainly Honour envelopes) from Sergeant Basil Eames of The Dorset Yeomanry. \Nick Colley had WWI Royal Flying Corps/RAF in Palestine, WWII Censored RAF mail in Palestine; the free Christmas airmail letter card with FPO148 and lastly British Fleet Mail 11 from Haifa in 1948 with cachet. Mike Fulford showed material from Smyrna of the period 1919 to 1923. The recounted that eight foreign countries had post offices and four foreign countries had military post offices in the region. Beginning with Italian post offices established in 1919 with differing postage rates as they increased rapidly. Temporary handstamps brought into use due to post offices being burnt down as the Greeks withdrew through Smyrna in 1922.. Greek occupation covers including those with Turkish Stamps with Greek censors. Greek free postage marks and covers with Greek patriotic labels and Greek FPOs. Ed Hall showed a pot-pouri of military mail from Palestine which, as usual, was beautifully illustrated with drawings on the page to complement the cover. The covers included TPOs (including LAK TPO), civilian usage of FPOs, French military mail and items from his Gaza collection. Alistair Kennedy finished off with a wonderful spread of material starting with a WWI cover of the New Zealand Mounted Brigade. Airmail covers of KLM depicting the rates and routes of the region to Europe including the short lived Beirut route, a cover of the 3/- clipper to the USA. Some pre and WWII covers with the 1st. Calvary Division in Palestine. Alistair showed the history of the British Army Postal Service in Palestine during WW2 in covers, including British Forces mail either side of the ending of the mandate and mail from the Jewish Brigade in Italy (and later Belgium). He pointed out that FPO 121 was at Haifa and not Jerusalem as suggested in a well known book on FPO locations. He also showed various items from UN Peacekeeping forces in the region. |