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| Title: | Unbeanstandet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted By: | Giles du Boulay (giles.duboulay@btinternet.com) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted On: | 17/11/2019 at 12:14:46 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Message: | Dear Malcolm Thanks for sending the scans. Now that I have seen this WW1 POW letter I think you were right first time i.e. the letter has been passed without objection (unbeanstandet) or the need for censorship. To my mind there are two clues to this: 1. The letter was addressed to the charitable organisation ‘Le Paquet du Prisonnier de Guerre’ in Lyon which leads me to suspect that the envelope originally contained a simple pre-printed receipt slip for a parcel received by the French POW in Dülmen. 2. The letter underwent the usual delay (usually 10 days) before sending in case there was some kind of coded intelligence in it, as evidenced by the ‘F.A.’ handstamp (sometimes seen as ‘F.a.’). Incidentally there are various schools of thought as to what these initials stood for. The two most often cited are either ‘Frist abwarten’ (time to await) or ‘Frist abgelaufen’ (time expired). I tend to go with the latter – in other words the ‘F.A.’ stamp was applied once the item had been held for the prescribed period and was ready to go into the mails. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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