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We marked the meeting with a talk from member Bill Travers who was there serving in the Royal Engineers (Postal Section) and a member of 203 Postal Unit RE. He recalled his journey from call-up to landing in Suez: a time of uncertainty, at times confusion and lack of clear instructions and command. Nevertheless they sorted themselves out and provided an important morale boosting service for the troops who came ashore. Bill worked in the registered letter area of the APO; as a non-collector he had kept very little from that period (he only joined the Society last year after meeting John Daynes at the - and he still does not collect, he is merely interested in the postal aspects after serving in a postal service himself). However, he proudly showed us his General Service Medal with the clasps for Canal Zone and Near East (the Suez clasp). We were missing two strong collectors of this area - John Daynes due to continuing illness and the members present sent their best wishes for his forthcoming treatment and to Edmund Hall who was in the real place as a member of the Egypt Study Circle delegation attending Egypt for the 75th Anniversary of the of the Philatelic Society of Egypt. Peter Burrows started off the displays with some Egyptian commemorative covers commemorating the evacuation of British forces from Egypt (dated 4 Nov 1954), the invasion of Port Said on 5 November 1956 (dated 20 Dec 1956) and the re-opening of the Suez Canal in 1957 (dated 15 Apr 1957) and these are illustrated on our website. Michael Dobbs had only one cover from the period, but also displayed a write up extracted from the War Diary of Postal Branch of HQ 2 (British) Corps held in The National Archives. This gave details of 203 Postal Unit (locations, staffing and APOs operated and FPO datestamps used). He also had extracts from his BFPO work relating to the BFPO addresses associated with Suez (BFPOs 60, 200 and 300). Alistair Kennedy had copies of "The Times" of the period with relevant news items. He then provided a chronology of events that led up to and included the invasion and this was accompanied by a selection of British mail from units in the Eastern Mediterranean during the build-up period. He also provided a list of Egyptian military POs (as collated by Ed Hall) and showed a couple of Egyptian military items. The major part of his display was censored British mail from Suez, Cyprus, Libya and Malta during the short censorship period of November 1956. This included the Army numbered diamond marks, Naval tombstone marks and the RAF censor marks. Nick Colley displayed a selection of mail from a Lieutenant in 3rd Parachute Battalion, postmarked in Cyprus (BFPO 60), including FPO 937 - the Parachute Brigades' own datestamp. He also included censored naval mail from HMS Duchess, HMS Phoenicia the Landing Craft Base at Malta, the RN Hospital in Malta and an official cover from HMS Eagle. Peter High had three photographs of the French hospital ship La Marseillaise. Then the return of Alistair Kennedy once more, this time with a selection of naval mail from the period censored with the naval tombstone censor, a single manuscript censored item, civilian mail from Cyprus censored by the civil authorities, censored civil mails from Syria and Lebanon to the UK,. Also a selection of covers with the FPO 443 postmark, including a postcard with FPO 443 of 18 DE 56 and in manuscript signifying the last day for BFPO 300. He also showed photocopies of French military mail from the collections of Ed Hall and John Daynes as well as items connected with Israeli occupation of Gaza, including a Red Cross message form sent from Cairo to Gaza. |
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