A nice message from “Milite Ignoto” (‘Unknown Soldier’, if your Italian is a little rusty) at a French email address points us all to an interesting postcard cipher sent from Palermo that is currently on display at the Vittoriano Museum in Rome.
The twist here is that, rather than the normal enciphered-note-to-a-lover so typical of the turn of the 20th century, this one was sent by an Italian soldier, and where the (as-yet-undecrypted) cipher itself was further concealed beneath the stamp. Yes, it is indeed a proper cipher mystery. 🙂
Our Unknown Soldier informant kindly sent us through two images, one of a larger section of postcard showing where the cipher sits beneath the (removed) stamp, and the other a slightly blurred image of the cipher:
When I put this page up earlier today, commenter Peter Moesli immediately pointed out that it looked to be the wrong way up (straight right edge, ragged left edge, etc). Which meant my initial transcription was completely back to front. *sigh*
Rotating the image around by 180 degrees gives a more sensible-looking block of ciphertext, where the first set of shapes appears to be “10:01”, whatever that means (the date on the postcard is quite different):
The start of this now looks as though it reads “10:01”, so I have transcribed that on a separate line. Hence my (revised) transcription is as follows:
10:01\
T.-.-
GTIT+G.VVI
/WIGXGP.AJJ.
/A+..A//LTA
MIPI/GJL+.
GTQPGTT.GL
VG-I.X.JGJA
SARGRA//.MA-
XA+A.
I (of course) tried putting this into CryptoCrack:
unsurprisingly, it yielded an Italian plaintext. Tweaked slightly (CryptoCrack swapped L and V, and I’ve added spaces to make it clearer):
10:01\ sono n
esiste oggi
chiedero avvo
cato accusa
mi ricevuto
espresso eu
genio doveva
farer accom
andatao
It turns out that the reason for concealment and secrecy was almost certainly legal (“avvocato” means lawyer). Can any Cipher Mysteries reader with good Italian (or, at least, better Italian than me) fix this up and translate it properly?
Incidentally, Joe Nickell (famous for his writing on the Beale Ciphers) once wrote about finding a series of postcards with tiny (though unenciphered) writing concealed in much the same way. Yet…
The hidden-under-the-stamp messages were simply miniscule love notes. One consisted of rows of little X’s (a popular shorthand for kisses), while another asked, “Do you you still love this bad boy?” The cards, postmarked between 1911 and 1913 were addressed to a young lady at a Virginia girls’ school (Nickell 1990, 177). Charming!
I’ve also read that Agatha Christie wrote a story where a cipher key was microwritten beneath a postage stamp (though I don’t know which one that was). The set of six postage stamps released in 2016 to commemorate Christie include numerous steganographic tricks, which is a lot of fun.
Having said that, there is also a long history of false stories (helpfully debunked here by snopes.com) dating back at least to the American Civil War where tales of atrocities carried out on prisoners of war are supposedly carried home in microwriting under stamps. So anyone looking for historical messages hidden beneath stamps should be more than wary of what they read and believe. 😮
Postscript:
Here’s a (small) picture of the postcard on display in the museum:
The text below says:
Nel quadratino dove era incollato il francobollo è ancora chiaramente leggibile un messaggio criptato scritto con lettere piccolissime, a matita. La cartolina è indirizzata al Maggiore Polizzi della 2a Divisione Ragioneria al Ministero della Guerra – Roma Spedita il 25-3-1918
“In the square where the stamp was stuck (and still clearly readable) is an encrypted message written in tiny letters in pencil. The postcard is addressed to Major Polizzi c/o the 2th Accounting Division at the Ministry of War in Rome, and was sent on 25-3-1918.”
Hello Nick
Are you sure that you have not posted the picture wrong? 😉
sleep
exists today
I ask, yes
accused
I received it
expressed eu
genius had to
make it happen
going
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenio
Nick,
The date-stamp looks odd – as if it were meant to read 11:22, 25th March 1918, but the ‘3’ for March appears inverted. How could that be? You’d have to remove the date-stamp’s wheel and re-fit it, but I don’t think that would have been feasible; the gear-teeth then wouldn’t mesh properly .. or so I’d think.
Is it a known Italian or Sicilian convention for writing one of the numerals, perhaps?
Perhaps the date-stamp’s also fake – a way to quickly identify the cards having a message hidden under the stamp. Maybe even/also decode key?
Obviously the year should be right, or it could arouse curiosity, so Palermo..1918..?
I only had a few moments to look at this, but it looks like he’s telling someone that 1) a jury does not exist, 2) he asked for an attorney, 3) received an accusation, and I can’t make out the part at the end about what is being “accomandatao” (accommodated?).
Also, whether the attorney had something to do with the accusation isn’t clear, it depends on where you break the sentence. I can’t tell if the request for an attorney and the accusation are part of the same sentence (that the attorney accused him), OR two different phrases (he asked for the attorney and, separately, was accused).
Okay, gotta run (I swore I would stay away from puzzles other than the VMS, but I couldn’t resist trying to work out this one because the letters are so similar to what they represent… he used the alpha character for “a”, a script “m” for “m”, the dot for “o” (which is traditional). That made it easier to “see” the other letters, but there are a couple near the end I’m unsure of which is why I can’t completely work out the meaning of the last phrase.
Actually, it might not be referring to “jury” either, but rather “fro” (forum) in the more general sense (as in a legal hearing). I made a leap there in assuming “fro” was jury, but now realize, “hearing” is probably a better translation. I only know a few words in Italian.
I don’t really know enough Italian to get the nuance of the last phrase.
I can’t tell if he’s saying he needed to make an alliance with Eugenio or if Eugenio had to make an alliance with someone else (other than the writer).
Anyway, it sounds like the writer was in some kind of legal trouble, has been accused, had to partner with Eugenio (or get Eugenio to partner with someone else on his behalf?0 and is not too happy about the situation.
Wait! Lightbulb just went on! Just glanced at it again while eating lunch (it’s like doing crossword puzzles… suddenly you see it differently than when you were stuck on it…)
It says Eugenio recommended it (not partnered up on it). It’s not accommondatao, it’s fare racconmandatao. Eugenio recommended it, provided counsel, advice.
Further to my suspecting the ‘date-stamp’ less than ingenuous, I began to wonder whether the parallel double lines isolating the inverted ‘3’ mightn’t be deliberate too, and … well… parallel lines and the otherwise innocuous ‘Ferrova’ (railway) might be meaningful too… who knows?
However, I do find an interesting item – that a military general named Eugenio Di Maria, who fought in the first world war (dying on 27th. June 1916) was buried – or more exactly his ashes interred – in Palermo. In 1918 that would still be common knowledge, I suppose. But here’s the thing: near the railway keeper’s hut at a crossing near Palermo, a military barracks used to stand, named for him. What I can’t discover is when it was first given his name, but it’s already recorded there in1938.
Quote: The line from the Trapani side immediately intersected the Malaspina road, with its relative level crossing. The [old] railway site is identifiable in the satellite image of 2016 with the wide light strip visible on the right, just above the complex of the barracks dedicated to Gen. Eugenio Di Maria. [unquote]
I have this from the website/blogsite of Sicilia en Trano , an article/post (29 July 2017) about The Lolli railway system.
With reference to JKP’s suggestion of the law, an equally famous teacher of law was named Eugenio Di Carlo and would have been 35 in 1918.
Born in Palermo on 21 January 1882 he died on 19 January 1969. Not sure where he was in 1918, but in 1919 he took a post as head of legal philosophy at the University of Camerino and remained there till the 30s.
This may all be by-the-way, but here’s Di Carlo’s biography.
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/eugenio-di-carlo_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
I don’t speak Italian, but I think “mi ricevuto espresso eugenio doveva fare raccomandatao” means “I received it express Eugenio had to make a certified letter”. raccomandatao could also mean “recommendation”.
Paul, could ‘it’ be translated ‘him’ do you think? as in ‘he came [lit. I received him] … etc.
Should we be making allowance for Sicilian-Palermo idiom?
PS Nick – to whom was the card addressed, do you know?
Nick, the addressee’s address is chopped off. Any chance the “unknown soldier” can let us know where it was sent? Was it by any chance Genoa?
The reason I ask is because 19 years later, there’s a Polizzi Celeste listed as President of the 8th zone in San Gottardo, Genoa, with some pediatric references in the listing. Polizzi Celeste is not an especially common name.
Unfortunately, Eugenio is a common name, but perhaps not as common as now (fewer people then).
JKP & Diane: I posted everything our Unknown Soldier passed me. I also went looking for other photos of the Palermo Cipher postcard on the Internet, but didn’t find anything.
Having said that, I only posted up the basic decrypt a few hours ago (I’ve been out watching a panto since, courtesy of the fabulous Linda Laundromat), so there’s plenty of time for more info to emerge just yet. 🙂
D. O’Donovan wrote: “Further to my suspecting the ‘date-stamp’ less than ingenuous, I began to wonder whether the parallel double lines isolating the inverted ‘3’ mightn’t be deliberate too…”
The parallel lines are the capital letter on the three-letter abbreviation, which was probably part of the addressee’s name/address. It looks like the same handwriting as the addressee’s name.
I don’t know many Italian abbreviations, and there are a lot of abbreviations for titles/honorifics. I’m guessing it might be capital-N+vowel+g+period.
It seems unlikely that it was deliberately used to frame the upside-down 3, since the postmark that includes the 3 would have been added later at the post office. I looked closely to see if the 3 was rubber-stamped or handwritten and it does seem to be rubber-stamped.
I’m scratching my head over the upside-down 3.
Normally there would be a blank or a Roman numeral in that position (at that date and place). I looked at a few dozen examples, and this was standard for many of the mail-by-rail postmarks in WWII. Some of them had stars in the outer ring, and some didn’t. The city was on top, FERROVIA on the bottom.
But, assuming the postcard was sent in the normal way, the address information would have been there before the postmark was added and, except for the inverted 3, everything about the postmark looks normal. It doesn’t seem likely the 3 was on the original postcard (I checked postcards from 1918 from Palermo and they didn’t have numbers in that position. Plus, it does look rubber-stamped, rather than being printed on the original card.
My friend in Italy says that the beginning part doesn’t make perfect sense in Italian but he translated the last part:
“received express [ordinary] mail Eugenio should have done a registered mail.”
You know what else would be interesting to know, Nick (it may not be possible to find out)… whether the stamp that hid the ciphertext was also upside-down.
I just saw an image of a 1918 postcard, sent via military post, that has the stamp upside-down. I can’t help wondering if it’s a signal that there is something underneath it.
Maybe he’s saying that it’s 10:01 and he still hasn’t received the mail.
I agree that the upside-down 3 is anomalous, but it so closely matches a rubber-stamp 3, it seems less likely that the sender added it. But if it were added at the postal station, the stamp would probably already be on the postcard.
I’m trying to think of a sequence of events that could rationally explain it, IF it has anything to do with the message under the stamp.
I am guessing that it says something like this:
10:01 [the mail] isn’t here. Today I’ll talk to a lawyer about the accusation. I received express mail. Eugenio should have done registered mail.
JKP – I don’t know about ‘unlikely’…. it’s ‘unlikely’ that a 3 would appear upside down if a date-stamp were being used.
Come to think of it, it’s ‘unlikely’ that there would be a message hidden under the postage stamp, or that the little strokes beside the stamp would indicate where the message was… or that the upside down ‘3’ would be cue to the fact that the message is written upside down.
People will do the damnedest things. And I do not think that postal men were the only people permitted to own a stamp and ink-pad.
But please – don’t exert yourself to discredit my ideas. More interesting to read yours, I think.
As a side note.
Before anyone starts detaching stamps from postcards to see if there is a hidden message under the stamp, I would suggest they consider whether the stamp was placed in the usual position or an unusual one like this example. It would be hard to write a secret message in the confines of the “place stamp here” boxed instruction.
In fact, offsetting the stamp from its usual position might be a signal to the recipient that a message was concealed underneath.
https://www.myheritage.com/names/antonio_polizzi
Antonio married Celeste Polizzi (born Maira).
Celeste was born on November 6 1889.
They had one son: Michele Polizzi.
D. O’Donovan wrote: “But please – don’t exert yourself to discredit my ideas. More interesting to read yours, I think.”
Diane, it’s not about YOU and YOUR ideas. When I comment on something, I am commenting on the logic. Many times I don’t even look at who wrote it (especially on forums).
On Nick’s blog I am obliged to look at who wrote it because there are usually four different threads on the same track and quoting the original is the only way to keep them all straight, but I generally write my response BEFORE I grab the quote and look at who wrote it.
Anyway, as I said (before you responded), the 3 is anomalous, no question about that. I looked at approximately 1,200 postmarks between 1917 and 1926 from that region. Couldn’t find any upside-down numbers on the postcards themselves or on the postmarks, but I am still wondering what rational sequence of events could result in it appearing in exactly the spot on the postmark that is usually blank (except where there is a Roman numeral).
I saw one postcard from a military station that had two stamps that were upside-down. It would be really tempting to see if there were a longer message under something like that. I wonder if there’s an imaging device that can shine wavelengths through the stamp paper to reveal hidden writing.
Some seem to be interested in postcards and stamps.
Here is a link from the postcard archive of the University of Zurich.
Maybe there is comparison material under the xxx-thousand-card. 🙂
https://www.e-pics.ethz.ch/index/ethbib.bildarchiv/index-000388.html
I bought several postcards on ebay with similar postmarks, including one with the upside down 3!
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/39YAAOSwFe5XxaOG/s-l1600.jpg
Paul Relkin: those crazy Sicilians with their upside-down threes! 🙂
PS: your “10:01 [the mail] isn’t here. Today I’ll talk to a lawyer about the accusation. I received express mail. Eugenio should have used registered mail.” sounds like it ought to be the correct translation. 😉
Wow, that’s cool, Paul. I spent over an hour looking through more than 1,000 postcards from that area and time and didn’t find a single one with an upside-down 3. I was about 98% sure it was a rubber stamp image (and not added later), but I wanted to be 100% sure and I wasn’t.
Okay, so WHICH post office had that crazy postmark? 🙂
.
Another question… since racommandatao has more than one meaning… I know that Posta Raccomandata means recorded-delivery mail/registered mail, but the cipher doesn’t say that, it says “fare racommandatao” or possibly “fare racommandata (with a period at the end)” and that can also mean something that’s recommended.
Did Palermo have recorded-delivery mail in 1918 (I assume it’s a good possibility, since war time requires keeping careful tabs on communications), but do we know for sure that they did?
Even if they did, the meaning still might be “recommended” rather than recorded-mail.
Here’s how the word was used in 1735:
“I tempi di Gioseffe non erano opportuni per fare raccomandata questa usanza agli Egizj)?”
This explains the name “Milite Ignoto”:
https://www.viator.com/Rome-attractions/Vittoriano-Museum-Complex/d511-a15438
“The Vittoriano monument, among the most famous landmarks in Rome, is home to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Vittoriano Museum Complex.”
Polizzi might be the recipient’s name, but is it possible that it refers to Polizzi Generosa in Palermo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizzi_Generosa
I don’t know if you saw it upthread, some decades after the postcard was written there’s a Polizzi Celeste listed as President of the 8th zone in San Gottardo, Genoa, with some obstetric and pediatric references in the listing. To have that kind of position in 1918, it was probably an older person. Polizzi Celeste is not an especially common name.
Since it appears to be a woman’s name (women held more of these kinds of positions during the war than before and after), then perhaps Polizzi Celeste is a married name. If it is, then Polizzi Generosa might be a maiden name and might be the same person.
But, as you posted, there was also a Celeste Maira that married Antonio Polizzi.
Unfortunately, even though Celeste Polizzi is not a common name, Celeste by itself was moderately common, and tracing the maiden names of married women is challenging. Unless you can find a marriage record (or a more-difficult-to-match-up birth or christening record), many maiden names are untraceable.
The upside down 3 represents the date, March. We can see this from Paul Relkin’s card where the ms message is dated 28/3/18 and the stamp 29 [inverted]3 1918. Spookily, the cards are dated 4 days apart so this may be one and the same physical stamp with a one-off error on it.
J.K. Petersen: Polizzi Generosa isn’t a person, it is a town in Palermo. Perhaps the postcard was sent to someone named Celeste who lives in Polizzi?
Markus: Wow!
Is 21-22 the number for the post office? Here are some postcards with the same number:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~LUAAOSwyglbZEgH/s-l1600.jpg
https://www.figurineliebig.it/cartoline/CFP_00866_R.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ZcYAAOSwYq5bZEk5/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/g2YAAOSwvNlbZEN7/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/9lsAAOSwjMdbZEnn/s-l1600.jpg
Hi Nick, thank you for sharing this interesting postcard.
Here is my go at it:
Transcription:
I0,0I|
P.-.-
GTIT+G.VVI
/WIGXGP.AJJ.
/A+.,A//LTA
MIPI/GJL+.
GTQPGTT.GL
VG-I.X.JGJA
SARGRA//.MA-
XA+A,
Substitution:
il,lib
ro non
esiste oggi
chiedero avvo
cato,accusa
mi ricevuto
espresso eu
genio doveva
fare raccoman
data,
Il libro non esiste. Oggi chiederò avvocato. Accusa Mi(lano) ricevuto espresso; Eugenio doveva fare raccomandata.
The [account?] book does not exist. Today I will ask the lawyer. The prosecution in Milan received the express [letter]; Eugenio should have sent a registered [letter].
I was hoping someone who knew Italian well would translate it. Thank you, Marco.
Paul wrote: “Polizzi Generosa isn’t a person, it is a town in Palermo.”
I wasn’t familiar with this as a town name. I was misled by the fact that both Polizzi and Celeste are people names (and Celeste is sometimes written Celestre according to the genealogy sites).
thanks marco, I think that’s very close. The extra ‘n’ on the first line bothered me, but your translation takes care of that nicely.
I was a lot younger when I last did Italian, and I’ve probably forgotton more than I remember, but doesn’t the ‘mi’ sort of mean ‘me’ (It’s a reflexive pronoun, or something)?
Mi Chiamo Milongal = Myself I call Milongal (ie my name is Milongal). I had a wierd idea that in the right grammatical circumstance, you can whack that pronoun on the end of the verb
so “accusarmi” would be ‘accuse me’
conversely (given the ‘r’ is missing) ‘mi recevuto’ would be I received it.
I don’t really like the commas either (there’s punctuation missing elsewhere, so why the comma, especially between ‘il libro’
And actually, while I really licked ‘Il Libro’, the slope of the ‘I’ is more like ‘C’
so the first line is something like: “c_o_ciro non”
Although, it also looks like there might be 2 different ‘.’ – ones vertically in the middle of the line, and ones vertically at the bottom of the line (Line 1 at the end of what Marco had as ‘libro’, after ‘avvocato’, the ‘o’ in eugenio and the at the end of raccomandata)
It’s interesting early on you can almost see spaces between words, but further down it runs together. Similarly, only 3 words are broken across lines – and all 3 could have been predicted and avoided (unless, I suppose you’re more worried about running out of space for more lines…)
I also wonder whether ‘doveva fare’ might be ‘dove va fare’ (‘he had to do it’ vs ‘where it had to be done’)
So I think all translations are close, but no cigar yet….
_something_ doesn’t exist. Today I will ask the lawyer who accused me of accepting Eugene’s recomendations too fast.
(accused seems a strong word). Reading between the lines, perhaps he believed Eugene about something (his lawyer recommended him “Don’t be so hasty to believe it”), and turns out it was good advice – whatever Eugene had talked about iddn’t exist.
These are photos of the exhibition: http://www.difesa.it/_layouts/15/MdDEvoluzione-Layouts/GalleriaFull/MsMdD.GalleriaFullscreen.aspx?PageId=10ac2e4b-7c85-4f50-babc-17b5e3638be6&Guid=3915e21d-745d-4531-b103-67fd668cddb3. In the image showing a soldier looking at the postcards you can make out the postcard (on the left above the left shoulder). The caption says that the recipient was “Maggiore Polizzi della 2a Divisione Ragioniera della Guerra a Roma” (Major Polizzi of the 2nd Accounting Department (?) in the Ministry of Defence in Rome). Maybe someone can read the card´s plaintext.
As can be seen, the exhibition contains more postcards with concealed messages.
Edit: “… Divisione Ragioneria al Ministero della Guerra…”
Despite several attempts, I cannot read the plaintext in the photo. Who can help?
Since “Polizzi” was a fairly widespread name in Palermo, probably Celeste stemmed from there and lived in Rome.
Hello,
My translation (IT – FR)
i so non esiste oggi chiederò avvocato.
accusa mi ricevuto.
Espresso Eugenio doveva fare raccomandata.
Je sais que ça n’existe pas aujourd’hui, je demanderai un avocat.
L’accusation m’a reçu.
Très rapidement Eugenio devrait faire une recommandation.
Hope can help.
ater I posted yesterda, I was thinking about Eugenio. To me it doesn’t really sound like an Italian name (but WWW disagrees with me, so I might have to get back in my box)…..
Couple that with my earlier point that the ‘o’ (or the ‘.’ representing the ‘o’) is IMO one of 3 ‘.’ that are different, that it’s spread across 2 lines, and that (for mine) the ‘L’ shape representing the ‘u’ also looks different (smaller and higher) than other characters translating to ‘u’…..and form mine the word isn’t ‘Eugenio’
Eugenio is actually a typical Italian name. E.g. the “Direttore Capo di Ragioneria” (i.e. Head of Accounting) in 1913 was Eugenio Petrucci (https://books.google.de/books?id=hVkvwdxv3fYC&pg=PA378) – and might still have been Polizzi’s boss in 1918.
@Thomas
here is the text :
Nel quadratino dove era incollato il francobello e ancora chiaramente leggibile unmessagio cripeato scritto con lettere picolo…. e matita. La cartolina e indirittata al Maggiore Polizzi della 2a Divisione Ragioneria al Ministero della Guerra – Roma Spedita il 25-3-1918
wich means in french :
A l’endroit où était collé le petit timbre et toujours parfaitement lisible, un message chiffré écrit avec des lettres minuscules … et un crayon. La carte postale est envoyée au Maggiore Polizzi de la 2e Division Régionale du ministère de la guerre. Rome expédiée le 25-3-1918
Christophe:
Thanks, but what I was referring to is the handwritten text, not the caption. The only words legible to me are: “Con te e…. trascorro…”
I found one with an upside down “4 – 5”
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/4IIAAOSwRgJXiTbT/s-l1600.jpg
I found a third postcard with the upside down 3 postmark. It is also from March 29, 1918.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/WVQAAOSwq1JZEhWC/s-l1600.jpg
I didn’t read all the comments, and need to watch with more attention the cipher text, but i’m italian so, i think i can do some consideration. (sorry for my poor english).
The chipher text itself seems partially to use arabic chipher. You should consider that Sicily was (in ancient time) influenced by arabic heritage.
The stamp: i believe it was an old brass type, mobile character stamp (so when you compose tha date, you can easily invert a character), so don’t think that upside down 3 is relevant in cipher. (Obviously if you use a postcard for a secret message and send it through postal service, don’t seems to be a good idea to fake a postmark… an already stamped postcard would be refused by post office).
In the Vittoriano Museum they stated that recipient of postcard is “Maggiore Polizzi” because they read the handwritten text on the date stamp as “Mag” (that is military rank major abreviated), but i see that it is more like an “R”, so it sounds “Rag. Polizzi Celeste” that is more simply and logical for me, because it is abbreviation for “accountant” (i got a screencapture of an italian tv-show that prooves that). So we have a guy Celeste Polizzi, presumably born in Palermo, who studied as accountant and was enrolled in general accountant division of armed forces in Rome (italian state capital obviously).
You have to note that Celeste could be even a female name in Italy, but obviously not our case.
Eugenio is definitely an italian male name, don’t need to doubt it.
The tv-shows i saw minutes ago, described the Vittoriano Museum, so only a blick on the postcard, but i can read few words of the postcard written “clear”:
“Con te e pe…
trascorso liet…”
I belive it is “With you and … I spend good (time?)”
There is either an “R” handwritten with different ink (like violet one) maybe a “censorship-checked” mark?
Defintely i believe that MarcoP guess the solution, an accountant dealing with the justice, could have a problem with an account book. Maybe it is about something he did in his home town Palermo, but now he is far (You can understand that being enrolled in Rome in WWI, was signal to high instruction level and either of being rich, poor people from south Italy would be enrolled in infartry and would fight in trenches in the worst and deadly areas of front in northen Italy). Someone keep him informed of the situation. But i don’t think that a problem in Sicily, could involve a Milan Court, considering it was Italy of 1918…
In the Vittoriano Museum they stated that recipient of postcard is “Maggiore Polizzi” because the read the handwritten text on the date stamp as “Mag” (that is military rank major abrrevated), but i see that it is more like an “R” sa it sounds “Rag. Polizzi Celeste” that is