22.11.1944 card from Zagreb to Banja Luka. Sender notes his Croatian feldpost number as H1241/23. Writer is a Croatian Muslim, sending greetings for Bajram festival (end of Ramadan fasting). Stamp 3,5 kn was correct postage, but War tax stamp wasnt attached. Therefore card is marked with big letter T hence postage due was to be paid, but was not charged.
This is the earliest usage of Croatian feldpost number i have seen yet.
1.04.1915 K.u.K Marinefeldpost from S.M.S Adria to Mali Lošinj(italian-Lussinpiccolo), Croatia. On the front of the card is Italian Easter greeting Buona pasqua.
Only cancel present is rare Zensuriert/Sms Adria/date/Marine-feldpost cancel. This unique cancel was used only on SMS Adria.
At the time SMS Adria was Gunnery training ship ,from October 1915 it was used as hulk to accommodate German naval personnel.
The Division was raised on 15.11.1943 , its formation and training(Aufstellung) was in Croatia around Zagreb(Agram) area. Divison reached strength of around 10 000 by the end of 1943. In the period January-March of 1944 parts of division were used for anti-partisan operations "Cannae" , "Fuchsjagd" and "Schneeschmelze" in the nortwestern Croatia.
As the core of officers came from 330 . Infantry division that was disbanded, to cover up formation of the new division, name 330.Gebirgs(Mountain) division was used for 367.Inf.divison from the January of 1944. This was done mostly to deceive Hungarians as division was planned to participate and later used in operation "Margarethe", the bloodless German invasion of Hungary . Division crossed Croatian-Hungarian border on 17.03.1944 and reached Balaton lake and city of Veszprem when it was ordered to return to Croatia on 21.03.1944.
Upon arrival in Croatia the Division was immediately transferred to Lemberg(Lviv , Ukraina) where it arrived on 01.04.1944, now under its true name 367.Inf.Dv.
Divison was in Croatia 15.11.1943-01.04.1944 and mail from Croatia is rare.
02.08.1917 postcard from K.u.K Kriegsmarine, Donauflottille (Danube river fleet) to Zemun, Slavonia then part of Croatia. Text is in Croatian language. Mailed via Fp.299b which served Donauflottille command and later KuK units in Romania.
All mail from KuK Donauflottille is rare but mail to Croatia is extremely rare, i have seen just a couple of items in years i collect Feldpost.
SMS Bodrog was river monitor that entered service with KuK Kriegsmarine in 1904, it fired the first shoots in the Great War. After the WWI it was transferred to Kingdom of Yugoslavia navy. During German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 it was scuttled but later raised and served with Croatian Navy river fleet as monitor "Sava" until September 1944 when it was scuttled again. Raised again after WW2 it served with Yugoslav navy again . In 2018 it was repaired by Serbian state to become a museum, and is one of the two KuK Monitors that are still around ,the other one being SMS Leitha in Budapest.
28.11.1942 Feldpost card mailed from Wien by a member od 369.Kroat.Inf.Div who notes his Fp.23274 - 14.Kompanie Kroat. Infanterie-Regiment 370. 369.division was training at the time in Döllersheim. Text is in Croatian and there is nothing interesting in message itself, a soldier writes to his uncle(Dragi Tetak -Dear Uncle),that he was in hospital in Wien and is about to return to his unit, but whole card and location of a recipient is very interesting.
Rigonce(Riegelsdorf) near Dobova is a village in Slovenia right on the border with Croatia. When Slovenia was divided between Germany and Italy in April 1941 , an German enclave was present in Italian part, in the area called Gottschee(German) or Kočevje(Slovenian). Germans decided to resettle Germans form Gottschee to their part of Slovenia (then a part of the Reich) to an area called Rann(slov.Brežice) triangle. This is an area between Sutla and Sava river around Brežice(Rann) In November 1941 Germans deported all Slovenians (46.000 people) from Rann/Brežice trialngle(Ranner Dreieck) to Germany and resettled Gottscheers there.
This feldpost card from late 1942 was mailed from Croatian soldier training in Reich to his family in Rann triangle who are resettled Gottschee Germans , and this is the first such letter i have seen.
After the war Gottscheers were evicted to Germany and Slovenians that survived the war in German labour camps in Saxony returned home, both groups suffered immensely in the War.
