WWII Military Library Stamps 2

Stamp on the cover of Is Sex Necessary? by James Thurber, 1944.

The acronym NYPE appearing in the ship-shaped rubber stamp above stands for New York Port of Embarkation. New York City was one of the coastal cities where troops embarked to be shipped overseas. 

Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge, 1944.

From 1943 to 1945 the 52nd General Hospital treated wounded in the English Midlands. The medical staff was composed of graduates of Syracuse University College of Medicine. I found a photo of the hospital ward there on the US National Library of Medicine website. It looks like there is a stack of books on the table! New York Heritage also has a collection of photos of the hospital.

The Travels of Marco Polo, edited by Manual Komroff, 1944.

Ilag VII was a German internment camp built in Bavaria to imprison Allied civilians (mostly Americans and British) captured as German forces invaded Europe. The stamp above has the word geprüft which means "inspected and approved"—the Germans would not allow reading material that criticized their people or government in any way. This Marco Polo book was probably donated to the prison by the Red Cross.

Selected Short Stories, by O. Henry, 1944.

The publishers who provided books as Armed Services Editions were very anxious to keep these paperbacks outside of the US (for fear of flooding the market). Military hospitals were eventually allowed distribute ASEs, but they were supposed to be destroyed after the war. This copy of Selected Short Stories somehow survived its stay at the Fairfield-Suisun Air Field hospital (now Travis Air Force Base, California).

The Pearl Lagoon, by Charles Nordhoff, 1945.

Part of the duties of the Special Services Division of the US Army was to improve morale with books.

Great Smith, by Edison Marshall, 1943.

The War Prisoners Aid of the YMCA sent spiritual, educational, and recreational materials to prisoners of war in Europe. This book was stamped by the sender in Switzerland (the stamp was not put there by the receiving library).

My previous post WWII Military Library Book Stamps includes nine other stamped books.