50 Centimes - Bon de cantine Vierzon

Bon de cantine notes were issued by individual French prisoner-of-war camps during the First World War to allow German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners to purchase goods at the camp canteen without handling French currency. Vierzon, a railway junction town in the Cher département, housed one of these depots. The scrip was strictly internal — it had no value outside the wire and was deliberately kept non-exchangeable to prevent accumulation of spendable currency by prisoners.

Camp-issued cantine bons survive in wildly unequal numbers depending on the size and duration of the depot. Vierzon examples are among the scarcer provincial issues.