Little is remembered about the international forces engaged in the China Japanese War which raged during the 1930s. On 23 August 1937 the Italian assigned the First Battalion of the 10th Regiment of Grenadiers to the Corps International Shipping for overseeing the international legations in Shanghai, China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War and returned home December 28 1938 
jimbo
C is for .... Cuba Libré!
This rare inverted Jenny with ""Cuba Libré" overprint was last seen on July 23, 2001 when, as the owner was removing it from the scanner, his cat ate it.
Efforts to remove it from the cat were cat-a-strophic.
The owner decided to keep the cat (value $2000) for reference purr-poses.
C is for Ceylon
This 1899 cover from Ceylon to Japan and eventually Seattle has a plethora of markings. Here’s my attempt at a write-up. Corrections gratefully received.
Franked with QV 15c and ? stamp, both tied with Ceylon CDS, postmark.
Addressed to the town (machi) of Handa in Aichi prefecture (on the coast of Honshu, south of Yokohama).
Jan 15 - “Singapore to Hong Kong” transit cancel on back
Jan ? - Handa arrival cancel on back
Readdressed to the German consulate in Yokohama
Jan 29 - Yokohama arrival cancels on back in English and Japanese
Readdressed to Seattle PO, WA
Feb ? - Yokohama cancel on front in English
Feb2? – San Francisco “PAID ALL” transit cancel
Mar 2 – Seattle “Train Late/Mail Delayed” oval die machine cancel
Mar 3 – purple straight line datestamp (applied at Seattle P.O?)
Mar 8? - Advertised CDS dated Apr 8 (so does this means that it was advertised in the local paper on March 8?)
The letter was claimed.
Somewhere between San Francisco and Seattle (I am suggesting) the second stamp came off, so the cover was charged 1c postage due (precanceled? PD stamp affixed next to missing stamp).
A telegram for a change. C is for telegrams from the Chin Hills from Bertram S Carey to the Chief Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, via Rangoon Cantonment.
The Chin Hills (now "Chin State") are a remote frontier tribal area in the north east of Burma (Myanmar). In the 1890's the British tended to leave the tribal areas to look after themselves, but felt obliged to "pacify" the Chin tribes on the grounds that they made persistent slave raids into the lowlands. A column of British and Indian troops set up base at "Fort White" - not so much a fort as a few mud huts and tents surrounded by a brushwood abatis - from where they set out to release captives, capture guns and burn Chin villages and granaries. The "Political Officer" attached to the military expedition, Bertram Carey, was an ambitious and intelligent young civil servant. His methods were ruthless and resolute, though he regretted that "the suffering caused to the Chin children by living in nullahs [the beds of dry streams] must be awful, to say nothing of the scarcity of food which almost all the rebels are feeling.”
When the Chin national leader and respected Burmese diplomat, Vum Ko Hau, died a few years ago, his possessions came onto the antiques market in Myanmar. Among them were a couple of bound ledgers of telegraphs and letters from the Chin Field Force to the authorities at Rangoon, which he must have obtained from the government archives. Most of the items are telegrams from Carey, many sent by the military field telegraph which ran through to the nearest civil telegraph office at the nearby town of Kalemyo. The Chin were soon wise to this and regularly snipped the wire to interrupt communications. When the wire was cut, message were heliographed (morse messages sent by flashing mirrors) or carried by runner to Kalemyo. Except, that is, when the bureaucratic mindset of the Indian civil telegraph clerks got in the way. On December 6th 1892 Carey wired in a temper from No 3 Stockade that:
“My telegram 667 was despatched from Fort White by special escort to Kalemyo as the line was cut. Telegraph clerk returned telegram saying debit note not accepted hence my communication to you delayed for days. Am reporting telegraph subordinate to his Superintendent.”
The Chief Secretary immediately required the Superintendent of Telegrams to “take steps to prevent such a contretemps in future.” Carey had also, it seems, complained about problems with the postal service, and gleefully wrote to Symes on 14th December that a post office superintendent had arrived at Kalemyo, “and all the Postmasters have been smacked and fined along the line …”
To finish, here's a great image of some of the Chin chieftains who were such a thorn in the side of the British, taken shortly after the annexation of their territpory. The photo is from Carey's book, published a few years later. Vum Ko Hau, an entirely twentieth century, cosmopolitan man, was the maternal grandson of one of the chiefs pictured here.
