Editor : James (Jim) Taylor 
2335 Paliswood Road SW, 
Calgary, AB
james-taylor@wave.home.com

President : David Allen 
2159 W 47th Avenue,
Vancouver BC
Canada V6M 2M6
Fax : 1-604-263-3141
dallen@axionet.com

Mr David Salovey 
Founder 
P.O. Box 464
New-York, N.Y. 10014-0464
USA

After the Christmas 1941 invasion and occupation of St. Pierre and Miquelon by the Free French Forces under Admiral Muselier, there was a real shortage of foreign exchange to enable the islands to purchase supplies, now that the Vichy administration was no longer able to transmit funds to the islands. In Douglas A.Anglin's book " The St. Pierre and Miquelon Affaire of 1941", he states on page 94-

"The shortage of foreign exchange was most critical during the early weeks after liberation. Despite frantic telegrams to de Gaulle urgently requesting a minimum of $80,000 from the " Caisse Centrale de la France Libre", little immediate assistance was forthcoming from London. ............

.....But the most celebrated source of revenue came from the sale of overprinted postage stamps. Responsibility for this undertaking was entrusted to Marcel Benda, a Free French hanger-on associated with the Montreal " Le Jour".Whether through ignorance or otherwise, he botched the operation badly, creating something of a scandal in philatelic circles. Moreover, part of the proceeds undoubtedly found their way into the pockets of some of those on the inside. The whole sorry mess was not cleaned up until the arrival in March 1942, of Henri Gauthier, a qualified philatelist and Free French leader from Ottawa.

Stamps worth $60,000 on the market were sold at their face value for $7,000. The remainder with a face value of $3,000 were sold by Gauthier for $34,000. Another series, specially surcharged " Oeuvres sociales" with a face value of $8,000 were ( according to Muselier) sold on behalf of the newly established Committee on Social Assistance for nearly $100,000.)

Mr. Anglin continues in his notes headed " Dramatis Personae" on page 177.

MARCEL ESTIENNE BENDA ( 1895- ). Former French intelligence officer.Escaped from occupied France and arrived in Canada, July, 1941. Journalist with "Le Jour" and sent to St. Pierre. In charge of surcharging St. Pierre and Miquelon stamps. subsequently served a two-year prison term in Montreal. Ordered deported and left for France, 1947.

Despite numerous enquiries in both Canada and St. Pierre, I have never been able to find out for sure if he may have been involved in the subsequent overprinting of war time issues that has caused such a headache to collectors over the years, and more so in these days when many of these reprints are turning up in auction houses in Europe and North America. As time goes by those who might be able to shed light on these affairs are no longer alive. There is an article by Marcelle M.Halliss called the "The Story behind the Free French Overprints" which appeared in the "S.P.A. Journal", the magazine of the Society of Philatelic Americans. In this article she recounts the story of how her husband accompanied the Free French liberation fleet and how he met Mr. Marcel B. who was to take over the island newspaper and was assigned to look after Propaganda and Public Relations. She states -

His first job was to print the "Proclamation" and he went to the Government Printing Office ,where he found a complete printing equipment for postal uses, a stock of stamp sheets, some essay proofs etc. Now, fortunately, Mr. B. ( she never refers to his last name ) was a philatelist and he realised at once the importance of overprints as a means of propaganda. ......... There was not one other complete set among all sheets in stock and Mr.B. being a stamp collector was well aware of these unique overprints issued in small quantities. But the Vice-Admiral (Muselier) was firmly against any businesslike dealings with the stamps and declared them at once "Valeurs bloquees"(Frozen values).......... In the meantime, when the news of the overprints got around, the little Post Office of St. Pierre was swamped with orders from dealers from U.S.A and Canada and the larger firms sent their buyers to Halifax, Nova Scotia, from where they applied for the permit to land on the islands. They were waiting with chartered planes - but the permits never came. The Vice-Admiral did not want strangers on the islands for security reasons and on the other hand having decided not to sell the stamps there was no point in having them come over.

In all that commotion my husband remembered suddenly my "orders" to bring some stamps home but by now he needed a special authorisation to enter the closed Post Office and to buy everything he could get. As an "extra" for me Mr.B. gave him an Essay proof of the Fr1.75, consisting of a sheet of 25 stamps overprinted "5Fr." in a pale orange instead of the regular red carmine........

Again there are no more reports except that a copy of a letter came in to my hands from Mr.R.Furn sent to Mr.K. Bileski - both parties were well known in the marketing of the stamps of this period from St. Pierre and Miquelon. In this letter dated 1949, a mystery seller had contacted Mr.Furn offering to sell an unknown quantity of the 55c. and 3frs.overprints. As there was some doubt as to the genuineness of this offer , the mystery seller stated that he knows that his stamps are genuine because his stamps are "issued at same time through his service because he was the man who give the stamp to be overprints by the printer. He is not afraid about the expertize. And I think he is right.He wants to come here if I have the cash money for him and if I pay the travell. I say O.K.........." ( sic ) .

It should be noted that there were only 27 of the 55c and 45 of the 3frs. officially overprinted, perhaps others of limited availability were also overprinted clandestinely as old remainders were not destroyed until September 1942.

Mr. Bileski in his notes to the letter states -
" Whatever he took to the printer there was also the request to print more of certain numbers. The printer went to his type supplies and set up the same format and did as he was ordered. Not quite the same. Nothing matches the originals exactly ! In 1991 a quantity of errors and wrong color overprints came up in an auction. They fetched enormous prices. I had no chance to examine them. Were they from the original printing? Yes. Knowledgeable auctioneers are well aware of the difference between the first and the clandestine job. So what are they ? The answer is simple. They were never issued or sold inadvertently to the public. In printing, errors do happen. The printer could also experiment with different colors at the start of his work. A pane or two of such was put aside. Errors would have been culled, one of two retained by the printer for reference and the rest destroyed. Plenty of errors happen when a printer tries to overprint already printed stamps. Most were destroyed. The public, the dealers, the speculators all got a very clean lot of stamps, of the ISSUED STAMPS . And we know exactly to the last stamp overprinted what was issued. It is all there, carefully itemized in the Saint Pierre and Miquelon government publication, "Le Journal Officiel" for September 1941 and February 1942. The errors and wrong colors? They are UNISSUED and if only small quantities of such exist, they are worth a lot of money.

So there the mystery is. Was that visitor to Canada in 1949 Marcel Benda, making a quick in and out journey to Canada after his deportation, trying to raise some possibly quickly needed cash ? I'd like to know more, so if anybody can shed further light on to this story please let us all know. Meanwhile take care, philatelists, when offered those high priced varieties of the wartime overprints of St. Pierre and Miquelon.

( Many thanks to Bob Beaune of Edmonton, who provided some of the links in this story)