JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2610

This is a detail of 10% or so of a document here, something that was printed regarding the socio-political temper of the liberated Netherlands in February 1945. 

And so:  “S.H.A.E.F. Mission (Netherlands) Political Intelligence Report No. 5. (For Fortnight ending 14 February 1945)  Intelligence from the Liberated Netherlands” are the running headers. And of course there’s the “S-E-C-R-E-T” part of it, no doubt necessary then but hardly now. The paper includes a report on food and fuel and living conditions, labour and employment, attitude of the population to the Netherlands government, attitude of the population to Allied troops, and so on.  What I found very interesting besides the report are the trails of where the document has been.  

First, here’s the front page of the document in full:  

To interpret, SHAEF was “Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces”–the hand annotations and stamps do say where the document has been. First off, we’ll start with the stamp on the back, which may have been the first stamp overall:

The paper was received by the CID on 1945 Mar 3–now the CID could have been a number of things but when placed in context with the notes on the front, the CID becomes the “Central Information Division”, which was the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services, and the precursor to the C.I.A.) and the R & D (“Research and Analysis Branch”). Underneath the hand-written “O.S.S” is a most-erased name, a Lt. Col. ________.  This is where the Found-Art comes in, because here I tried my trickery and foolery to pull out the name, but I failed, only being able to grab a couple of letters.  The result though was interesting in itself, if not for who Lt. Col. ______ was.  And so, there you have it, a little exercise that went off into the rabbit hole, producing something interesting but not useful. That happens a lot.