The "Commando Brief" frank was used during the second Boer War (1899-1900) by members of the OFS forces on active duty. Originally, the requirement for letters to pass through the OFS field post system was that they be initialled by the Commanding Officer of the unit the soldier belonged to. Before long, the volume of mail seems to have become large enough that this was causing problems, and this frank came into existence.
The frank was designed by A. Hochapfel, a Bloemfontein chemist, and was printed by Curling & Co. of Bloemfontein in black on yellow paper, laid out in sheets of 20 comprising 5 columns and 4 rows. The sheets were then line perforated 12. There is evidence that each row was printed separately. In addition, it is possible to identify which position in the row any particular frank comes from, as there are relatively large differences between the five dies used.
The two examples below show all five positions between them. The first example shows positions 1, 2 and 3 from the top two rows of a sheet, and the second example shows positions 4 and 5 from the bottom row.
As relatively few sheets were printed, and as the frank was not in use for very long, examples are reasonably uncommon.
Blocks of franks in particular are very rare. According to Rich3,
most of the unused copies in existence were taken from General Piet Cronje's camp when it was captured by the British
during their advance north through the Orange Free State. The illustration below shows a partially reconstructed
sheet, complete except for the two lower position 3 stamps.
Genuine used examples are also rare, and because of its origin most of the used examples are found postmarked from
within the strip of the eastern Cape Province where much of the fighting took place. The example below is postmarked
"Modder River, C.G.H." and dated "JA[N] 9, 19[00]" and comes from position 4.
Forgeries of this stamp exist, both mint and used, and in my experience are rarer than the genuine stamp. In the philatelic literature, two types of forgery are usually listed:
More detailed work indicates that there may in fact be more than one (sub- ?) type of lithographic forgery. The illustrations below show a single lithographic forgery, and a complete sheet of eight.
In addition to these well-known types there exists the so-called 'ship' forgery, which has a line drawing of a boat. I believe that these exist in both red and blue on white paper, but I have never seen a real one. I suspect that this forgery is German in origin, as the layout is broadly similar to the contemporary 'yacht' issue of German South West Africa (now Namibia).
I have recently come across some new types of forgery, which are shown below. The pink and blue ones are unlikely to deceive - apart from the colour, the pink forgery is on much thinner paper, and the blue on a thick (almost card-like) paper. These two forgeries are almost identical in appearance, but they differ slightly from the pair of yellow ones, which might well fool the inexperienced collector.
From the appearance of the paper I suspect that all three of these forgeries are modern, and I wonder if they are perhaps photocopies (??). If anybody has any further examples or information, please let me know.
