Irish Passport with several AMG revenue stamps
An Irish passport issued in 1948 with five excellent Allied Military Government (AMG) revenue stamps. Not often do we find passports with so many AMG stamps and visas, especially not in an Irish travel document – a rare combination. Irish passport AMG stamps
The U.S. Military Government of Germany: A Personal Recollection
While many senior officers were encamped at Shrivenham, the lower grade officers and enlisted men were sent to Manchester. On their arrival in February 1944 by icy blasts and rain. The space assigned for training, organization, and mess hall was a dimly lit brick building. Many of the men were quartered with private families. I, too, arrived early in February and was assigned to the 3rd Military Government Regiment and sent to Heaton Moor, a suburb of Manchester. For the next six months, I lived with the rest of the men in one of the old, vacated houses on the street bordering the railroad tracks.
The daily routine was demanding
There were language classes for those trained in German and schools for the jeep and motorcycle drivers, the medical supply personnel, and the criminal investigators. Instructions for the handling and firing of the carbine and pistol and the arms of the MG personnel. Lectures from various specialists. One was on the method of defusing bombs, delivered by a Yorkshireman. We applauded politely, but his dialect was so thick that none of us understood him.
There were air raid drills
with lectures given by a local Air Raid Precaution organization. “The teachers were men whose methods had worked successfully during the great blitz of Manchester in 1940 and 1941.” We took these lectures seriously after watching trainloads of mothers with their children arriving from London after the V-2 bombing raids, pale, wide-eyed, and unsmiling. Seeing them made the war more real to us.
Invasion Forces
There were constant reports that the invasion forces were gathering in the south of England. The failure of the Dieppe raid in August 1942 was behind us. We were all impatient for the promised landing on the French coast. The rumors intensified late in May and early June. The night of June 5 and the early morning of June 6 found me on guard duty. During the early hours, a constant drone overhead filled the air, planes were flying too high to be seen, but the sound of thousands of them flying south was incredible. Our civilian neighbors, awakened from their sleep, gazed up at the sky at the bombers and fighters they could not see. We knew before General Eisenhower’s announcement that morning that the English Channel was being crossed and that D-Day had begun.
Irish passport AMG stamps