Guthrum

30 Oct 2015
05:21:48pm

re: Military Script??

Try this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_British_Armed_Forces

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Guthrum

31 Oct 2015
05:53:05am

re: Military Script??

Try this link:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/british-armed-forces-notes

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TuskenRaider

31 Oct 2015
03:21:39pm

re: Military Script??

Hi cdj1122;

A few years ago I sold a Viet Nam vet some fractional currency in the form of notes. He was using to make a shadow box gift for his grandkids.

The paper notes were in various denominations to replace coins which were not allowed to be carried in Nam. If you are well hidden while a Viet Cong squad is nearby and your coins rattled, it would give away your position and get your whole company killed.

Just another nightmare from our dark past....
TuskenRaider

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ikeyPikey

23 Nov 2019
07:59:24am

re: Military Script??

During the Vietnam War, the rule was that you could only spend US military scrip on base.

This was to stop you from spending the stuff off-base on, shall we say, the things young men will buy for cash when they are off-base.

But they also wanted to defeat the on-base drug dealers, gambling enablers, etc.

The countermeasure against off-base spending was the surprise swap-out. One night, the MPs would close the gates (all of the gates, everywhere), and GIs could exchange yesterday's money for tamara's money. Off-base civilians could not.

The companion countermeasure was that you could only change a limited amount. Thus, the on-base drug dealers, et al, might get caught with their pants down, and whatever scrip they were holding would turn to dust.

Of course, the stuff got spent off-base, in the civilian economy, anyway.

After all, money's money, and a medium of exchange is just that.

But the off-base crowd did not want to get caught holding the stuff during a surprise swap-out (for a 100% loss), so they split the difference.

Any enterprising GI could go off-base, and buy U$D 500 in scrip for U$D 250 in folding green pictures of dead presidents.

That same GI would then return to the base post office, where he could buy a U$D 500 postal money order with scrip, and then mail that postal money order to a cooperating party back in the world.

That person would cash the postal money order, take a small cut (if it was not a family member), and mail back the rest of the cash.

In case you have not been paying attention, the enterprising GI has turned U$D 250 into U$D 500.

Fifties were the preferred compromise between hundreds (less easily spent) and twenties (less easily concealed).

Greeting cards were the preferred conveyance, as they provided the thinnest of cover stories in the event of discovery, as well as the stiffness to hide the fifties.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (whose go-to cover story is that he only read about this in the NYTimes, which has the advantage of being entirely credible)

 
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Bobstamp

24 Nov 2019
11:49:56pm

re: Military Script??

My Marine Corps battalion operated in the I Corps Tactical Zone, from Quang Ngai Province to the DMZ. Our combat operations were confined to Quang Ngai Province and what was then Quang Tin Province. Here's a current outline map of Vietnam:



The province shown in red is Quang Nam Province, the southern half of which includes the former Quang Tin Province. The province shown in blue is Quang Ngai Province, where I was wounded. At no time during the First Indochina War (1946-1954) or during the Vietnam War was Quang Ngai Province "pacified" — the communists controlled virtually every aspect of life in the province. When my company was ambushed — my platoon was "on point" — we weren't even aware that the communists were waiting for us in a well-supplied, well-armed "fortress" carved out of a small hill. My battalion lost 98 Marines that day.

Quang Ngai and Quang Tin provinces were largely rural. I "visited" only one city, Tam Ky in Quang Tin Province, when my company was being moved by truck to an area where VC were thought to be operating. In short, I never went anywhere in Vietnam where I could have spent money, but I never saw any money, not military scrip, not Vietnamese coins or currency. Perhaps there would eventually been a pay parade had I not my almost-million-dollar wound not occurred, but my back-pay didn't catch up with me until I'd been hospitalized for several weeks in San Diego. But I was familiar with military scrip.

For two years before my tour of duty with the Marines, I was stationed at the U.S. Navy Hospital at Yokosuka, Japan, which had been the main Japanese naval base. I never saw any U.S. currency during that time; our pay was all in MPCs. Here's an example that I have in the scrapbook I kept at that time:



Near the end of my second year in Japan, I learned from the owner of a Japanese camera store that I frequented that new MPCs were going to be issued, and he was right: the next day the naval base was shut down and we had to turn in all of our MPCs and be issued with new ones.

To answer Harvey's questions about Canadians in Vietnam, I can only say that yes, definitely, there were Canadians there, some 10,000 of them by the end of the war. I didn't encounter any, but there was a German in my battalion: he'd overstayed his welcome in New York City and had been drafted. At least that's how I remember it.

When I lived in Prince George in central British Columbia, I tried to start a Vietnam Veterans group. I was the only American. I had hoped that the group could become a sort of VFW for Vietnam Vets, but it didn't work out well. While I felt that I had lost my country in Vietnam, the other guys mostly had personal grudges against the U.S. and the U.S. military, and for good reason.

One member of the group suffered from severe PTSD. He had fractured both ankles jumping from a helicopter; he was hospitalized only long enough to be able to send him home. He received no compensation, and was a very angry man. In fact, my understanding is that the U.S. has not maintained any records of Canadian Vietnam vets, and they were never eligible for disability compensation. Another member of the group suffered serious paranoia; he believed that the CIA was constantly watching him because of secrets that he knew.

This past Remembrance Day was interesting. For the first time since 1969, when my wife and I emigrated to Canada, a Vietnam veteran was allowed to lay a wreath at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. At least I don't remember that ever happening before. And one of the speakers included Vietnam veterans in his remarks about veterans of WWI, WWII, and the Korean War. That felt good.

Bob

 
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cdj1122

re: Military Script??

" ....I'm a bit of a history addict, most stamp collectors are. I never heard about this aspect of the Vietnam War. ...."

Not just the Vietnam Unpleasantness.
We used script in Japan in the late fifties and early sixties, and in fact, I have an example of script used during WW II from the "Allied Military Horde"

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