The Royal Mail announced this week that its commemorative D-Day stamps would be released in June to mark the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.
However, historians spotted that one stamp featured the wrong type of landing craft and that the photograph actually showed American troops landing at the town of Sarmi in what was then Dutch New Guinea, on May 17, 1944.
The picture first appeared in the July 1944 issue of the US naval magazine All Hands. The image is archived on the US National WWII Museum website, which commemorates the role American soldiers played in the Second World War.
Andy Saunders, a military historian, wrote on Twitter: “What a shambles . . . Wrong theatre; wrong date; wrong vessel; wrong troops. This is a gross insult to veterans and those who didn’t make it.” Another Twitter user wrote: “The Royal Mail should be ashamed. Having two members of my family involved in D-Day, their misrepresentation, on a stamp, is unbelievable.”
A spokeswoman for Royal Mail said: “We would like to offer our sincere apologies that our preview release for our 2019 Special Stamp programme included a stamp design that had been incorrectly associated with the D-Day landings. We can confirm that this image will not be part of the final set, which will be issued in June 2019.”
Anna Behrmann 