Picked these up this week and thought I'd share.
At the outbreak of WWI, most of Germany's colonies in the Pacific and Africa were quickly overrun. The only exception was German East Africa, where German forces under General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck defeated the British in battle, then took to the countryside to conduct a 4-year-long campaign.
Most of the Germans captured by the British in German East Africa (and to a lesser extent, German Southwest Africa) were transported to India, where they were interned at the Ahmednagar POW camp.
In Ahmednagar, the POWs could write four letters a month, two in German and two in English, on a single sheet of paper measuring 4"x7". They could send an unlimited number of postcards because the postcards were easier to censor.
Here are a couple postcards,one in English and one in German, sent from the same POW in Aug and Oct 1919.
The POW was instructed to cross out the inapplicable portions, and to write only the date and signature. This made the cards easy to censor.
Posted 12/02/2011 3:13 pm
