Tyske militære avdelinger og feltpostnumre tilknyttet Norge 1940-1945 (German Military Units and Fieldpost Numbers Connected with Norway 1940-1945), 2^nd edition by Erik Lørdahl. 128 pages, 8 ¼ by 11 ¾ inches, perfect bound, in Norwegian, plus CD; War and Philabooks, Tårnåsen, Norway, 2011. ISBN 978-82-995588-4-1, $70 plus postage from War and Philabooks, Gydas v. 52, 1413 Tårnåsen, Norway.

            So much new information has surfaced since the first edition of this work in 2001 that the new book now requires over three times as many pages and a greatly expanded fieldpost database on the accompanying compact disc. The book begins with a military history of Norway from the German invasion in 1940 to the end of World War II in 1945. Descriptions of six army, navy, and air force fronts are described at Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Kristiansand, Oslo, and Egersund.

            Details of the German forces are shown in tables to give an idea of the extent and complexity of the occupation including military units and lists of the Luftwaffe’s aircraft throughout the country, and the fieldpost numbers assigned to the air force units. Both the air force and navy sections are filled with wonderful picture postcards of the sea and air craft. From these six locations the scheme of German fieldposts evolved and the mail of these posts is the focus of the book.

            The author then turns to the postal history associated with these military units, yielding a richly illustrated description of SS inspection stations, the Organization Todt labor forces, and a listing of the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Corps) fieldposts. Discussion of the various classes of mail include letters and postcards, air mail, registered, courier, parcel, money transactions, and a variety of fieldpost printed forms.

            Many handstamped censor and transit markings are shown together with an important warning about counterfeit handstamps that have come on the market in recent years. A list of abbreviations and literature sources used conclude this book. Most of the illustrations are in color.

            The compact disc contains thousands of records in Excel™ files that are sorted three ways. The columns of data in each sort consist of fieldpost number, service (army, navy, air force), Kenn number (fieldpost office 3-digit code), dates of use (from-to), unit designation, county, town, literature source, and any supplementary notes. The three different sorts help collectors to search by German fieldpost number, or county/town, or unit type. There is an enormous amount of data in these three files to which the author is adding new data as it is acquired.

            Erik Lørdahl is not only an author of books and articles but also the editor of the Norwegian War and Field Post Journal. He acknowledges the help of fellow collectors in Norway and Germany in compiling the text and database. In November 2011, Lørdahl was honored with Norway’s most prestigious philatelic award, the Anderssen-Dethloff Medal. He is now one of only 26 distinguished individuals to hold this honor since its inception in 1942.

Alan Warren