Pink postcards 27

Absender: Odesilatel: Nadawca: Mittente: Pośiljatel: Posiljać: Presentatur:

K. Timó 1st Marching Regiment Martini Battalion Bányay Company Post 350

Feldpostkorrespondenzkarte

To the honored Miss Antonia Zajác
3rd district, Kis-Korona Street 52.
Budapest

Previous letters (gray dots): • Galicia, 6 August 1915 • Galicia, 2 August 1915 • Galicia, 25 July 1915 • Galicia, 14 July 1915 • Galicia, 12 July 1915 • Galicia, 6 July 1915 • Galicia, 25 June 1915 • Galicia, 10 June 1915 • Debrecen, 5 June 1915 • Budapest, 1 June 1915 • Budapest, 1 March 1915 • Budapest, 10 February 1915 • Kecskemét, 30 January 1915 • Dukla Pass, 11 January 1915 • Felsőhunkóc, 4 January 1915 • Sztropkó, 31 December 1914 • Budapest, 23 December 1914 • Budapest, 21 December 1914 • Budapest, 11 December 1914 • Budapest, 2 December 1914 • Budapest, 28 November 1914 • Budapest, 27 November 1914 • Budapest, 18 November 1914 • Budapest, 27 October 1914 • Debrecen, 25 September 1914 • Szerencs, 28 August 1914

My dear mom

August 22.

Today I received your long-awaited postcard. I had thought you completely forgot about me. Since the 4th, this is the first card from you. I was starting to get annoyed. I was very happy that Feri had written, so you see, one must not give up hope. Now you only have to patiently wait until he comes home. As to me, you can be completely calm. We have been in peace for a longer time, so far as one can be in the battle field.

You can imagine, if martial music is playing in the front! The Russians also like it, they also listen to it without shooting.

In the workplace, nothing special. Béla also went away again, certainly to the Italian battlefield. Kozma(novics) is down somewhere in Dalmacia.

There is currently no other news.

Many kisses and embraces from Károly


[The whereabouts and exact place of Károly Timó’s troops, apart from fighting somewhere in the Russian front, are completely unreadable from the field postcards. After a hundred years it is almost impossible to exactly trace how the regiments, battalions and sections swirled, sweeping along Infantryman Károly Timó. And even if we could identify the details, like the place where he was wounded in the winter, we cannot imagine what he and his comrades might have thought and felt there. His braid-maker colleagues from the workshop are scattered around all the fronts. They must be missing from the rapidly increasing market of black braids, cords and fringes.

Censorship works perfectly. Only the stamp of the field post office and the number 350 gives some hint to the modern researcher.

On the structure of field post offices there are several overviews on the internet.

The structure of field posts

My starting point was an English-language website of Austrian philatelists. It lists the names of the divisions, whose correspondence was forwarded by a field post of a certain number. Accordingly, Károly served in ID 55, that is, the 55th Infanterie-Division, whose commander-in-chief between October 1914 and October 1915 was General Marshall Ignaz Fleischmann. These data can be obtained in just a few clicks from the English-language database of the division commanders.

A few more clicks lead us to the most important source on the divisions. According to them, their military activities and major battles in August and September 1915 were the following.

The offensive in Eastern Galicia was conducted between 26 August and 6 September, the battles along the Siret river between 6 and 12 September. The site maps.hungaricana.hu, published by the repeatedly cited Arcanum Kft., is a great help in following the Galician military events.

Galizien (Karpathen), Bukowina nebst anschiesendem Ungarn, Russland U. s. w. (Ludwig Ravensteins Kriegskarte N. 26.

Then, in 13 and 14 September 1915, the Russians launch a counterattack in the region of Burkanow and Lutsk.]