Another Messy Cover I'd Like To Share...

I found another messterpiece!

What a great cover this is. Seems to have gone to England and France and then back;return marking plus emergency envelope seals.

Thanks revcollector, it is certainly well travelled and it's an honour that it has chosen to live with my collection for a while!
I feel it's like all other covers... unique!

Earl Steele sounds like a great name for an action movie hero or ,in this case, a real one. The name as well as the history suggested by the cover caused me to do a little digging [I feared he might have been a casualty].

It turns out he was a substitute bombadier on several different B-17s and completed the 25 mission quota. He had a hair raising mission over Lorient where he had to bail out over southern England while his pilot crash landed the plane on the grounds of an English mental hospital. His bomber group name was "Hells Angels" , the plane he bailed out of "Werewolf". There's a movie in there somewhere.

If you'd like to see his crew photo google "303rd bomb group haas crew"

Wow Aviatik, you research the cover well!
I'll print it and the picture and put it with the cover for when I die and the kids sell off stuff because they have no sense if history!
I hope my stuff is worthy of auction!

Interesting history with that cover. I wondered too if things didn't end well since the cover chased all over and it was the middle of the war.

Whoa. .talk about messy!

I have been asked to opine on the "G.D.-A." mark. Two thoughts immediately come to mind.

The first (which I like best) is GD = General Delivery, which date matches both Oswego datestamp dates and the re-addressing on the front to General Delivery/Oswego. The "A" could mean a variety of things.

The second (which can be pretty well debunked) is that GD or GDA are the initials of a clerk at one of the offices this cover passed through on that date, but checking the employee lists in the 1909 "Official Register" volume does not find any match, though granted 2 years late. Thus mostly debunked, although I have seen several local auxiliary markings containing clerk initials.

John Becker- Thanks for the info.I asked John(in another thread) to look into the GDA mark since I could not find it with a web search. I thought it might have to do with directory assistance like my "Max Clair" cover upstream but could find no proof for that.

I'm really taken with the effort they put into finding people back in the day. The senders many times even tell the PO in the return address "if after x days return to y". Almost as if they are saying "Hey guys don't try too hard." My experience of todays' USPS is if an address is off in the slightest they kick it back to sender right away.

Expanding on carrier initials, when I see three letters or initials, checking the "Official Register" volumes is useful to ID matches to employee names.

The circled CPM matches with Clie P. Maffet at Marion, Indiana, who likely provided the directory assistance to forward the card to North Manchester.


The circled ACJ matches with Arthur C. Jones at Logansport, Indiana.


And no doubt these are carrier initials in the 2 auxiliary markings:


Such "fractured" mail often tells a more interesting postal history story than mail delivered without any difficulty.

This U67 cover mailed in Nov 1886 from Big Rapids, MI to Pasadena, CA. Date mailed not in Postmark but does have a time stamp of 11 AM. Postmarked in Pasadena 11/15 and 11/29. Redirected to Oakland, CA and received 12/01. Cover unfortunately destroyed when opened but postmarks show length of time cover was in transit.

This is one of my favorite finds for my Hawaii cover collection. From Hawaii with a Hawaii #33 to New Haven, Connecticut. There it was crossed out and send to Wilton, New Hampshire with the addition of a US 3cent stamp.