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Red faces in the British Royal Mail offices recently, a stamp, intended for issue next year, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings, was said to portray troops landing in Normandy, France.
On closer inspection, the image was one of U.S. troops, and stretcher bearers, coming ashore in Dutch New Guinea, in May 1944, 8500 miles from Normandy, the stamp has been pulled.
No doubt embarrassed by this, an enterprising reporter, British maybe, but I don’t know for sure, discovered that the U.S. Postal Service were going to issue a stamp featuring Lady Liberty, in New York harbour, but as she appeared to be too clean, an inspection was made, and the Lady Liberty on the stamp, was from a replica statue in Las Vegas NV.
It's almost incomprehensible how errors like this are made, given the glacial process of stamp design from selection and approval through endless art and printing checks and such. One would assume that the commissioned artist works from an image that has been carefully vetted.
The USPS made the same mistake with their legends of the West stamp a decade or so ago. It used the face of the wrong cowboy. The stamps got pulled by the USPS. The value of those already purchased skyrocketed. Stamp collectors were thrilled. The "mistake" became a rare, valuable stamp.
I can't remember without googling what the USPS did, but to recover from that financial loss, it pulled off a scam. There was no way the USPS was going to lose all that money by recalling the error stamps, while stamp collectors were profiting by their mistake.
Maybe someone else will have the time to google and post what the post office did with those stamps. I think it had to do with selling them through a lottery? Somehow they put that mistake stamp back into circulation.
The USPS regained their lost revenue. The value of that Legends of the West Stamp sheet plummet ted down to a few hundred dollars. Stamp collectors were royally PO-ed.
I would put the error down to senior postal management, who are not at all educated about WHAT the soldiers of different nations were wearing in WW2 . The most obvious difference is the shape of their helmets. The British type was completely different ( in it's design ) than the US model was. The uniforms were also very different in appearance.
I would put the error down to senior postal management, who are not at all educated about WHAT the soldiers of different nations were wearing in WW2 . The most obvious difference is the shape of their helmets. The British type was completely different ( in it's design ) than the US model was. The uniforms were also very different in appearance.
Sloppy work.
To be fair to both Royal Mail, and the USPS, I think that the British stamp that was pulled, just showed U.S. soldiers coming ashore,
I’m not sure, but I don’t think that the stamp proclaimed, “Our brave British boys hit the beaches.”
Certainly, when I think of the D-Day landings, I get a mental image of Americans wearing pot helmets, not just the less close to the head, saucer shaped ones, like my dad wore when he drove his lease-lend Mack truck from an American LCVP on to the beach in Normandy.
It's almost incomprehensible how errors like this are made, given the glacial process of stamp design from selection and approval through endless art and printing checks and such. One would assume that the commissioned artist works from an image that has been carefully vetted.
I guess not.
This. I don't know how such a mistake could be made.
lots of troops ended up on the wrong beach on D-Day, that doesn't make their heroism any less remarkable
A stamp honoring them is appropriate no matter what. However, a failure of basic research in step 1 - which has happened more than once recently and is incomprehensible - doesn't exactly buff the memorial to a high shine.
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