Army Postal Service 1914-1919

Regular arrival of post from home is often quoted as a boost to soldiers’ morale. British troops in every theatre of war benefited from an extraordinarily efficient system that handled letters, parcels and even newspapers. But how did a system evolve that could deliver post addressed from home to an individual soldier so frequently and quickly?

Imperial War Museum photograph Q17360, from the Scots Guards collection. Simply captioned “Sorting mail”.

Mobilisation and general plan

At mobilisation in August 1914, the on-paper establishment of the Royal Engineers Special Reserve (Postal Section) amounted to ten officers and 290 other ranks. They were, in the main, Post Office employees who would form the following units:

  • 1 Base Post Office
  • 1 Advanced Base Post Office
  • 2 Stationary Post Offices
  • 1 Field Post Office with General Headquarters
  • 1 Field Post Office with the Inspector General of Communications
  • Divisional Offices:
    • 1 Field Post Office with each divisional HQ
    • 1 Field Post Office with each infantry brigade HQ
    • 1 Field Post Office with each HQ Company of each Divisional Train.

The Army Postal Service was commanded by a Director and an Assistant Director of Postal Services, at headquarters of Administrative Services and Departments.

With the original British Expeditionary Force

Advance parties of the Base and Advanced Base Post Office staffs embarked for France on 11 August 1914. The rest left four days later. The Base Post Office was set up at 8 Rue de Caligny in Le Havre and the Advanced Base Post Office at the Salle des Fêtes at Amiens. The Stationary Post Offices were set up at Rouen and Boulogne, respectively.

Mail for the troops was routed to the Military Base Office of the GPO in London, where it would be sorted into unit bundles. The Home Depot Reserve (approximately 30 men) of the RE Postal Service was employed on this task. The bundles were then shipped from Southampton to Le Havre and sorted at the Base Post Office into unit and Field Post Office bags. They were then moved to the Advanced (railway) Regulating Station at Amiens for onward shipment to the divisional railheads. Movement was then carried out by the Divisional Supply Columns (which were units of the Mechanical Transport section of the Army Service Corps), which conveyed the mail to the Field Post Offices.

1914 war of movement

The early months of the war were characterised by much movement of the divisions (incuding their attached Field Post Offices) and by temporary relocation of the Base Depots and General Headquarters. Inevitably this had a negative effect on the ability to operate a consistent and efficient postal service.

On 27 August 1914 the Advanced Base Post Office was relocated from Amiens to Rouen (it was set up in the Bourse), and the city also became the Regulating Station.

Four days later the Base Post Office began to relocate from Le Havre to Nantes, where it was set up at the skating rink on the Rue Arsens de Loup. The Advanced Base Post Office also began to move from Rouen to Le Mans.

On 13 September 1914, with the BEF beginning to advance again, the Advanced Base Post Office moved once more, this time to Villeneuve St. Georges, which also became an Advanced Regulating Station. Next day, the Stationary Post Office that had been at Boulogne moved to Marseilles.

The demands of the Christmas period of 1914 – a 90% increase in letters and 345% in parcels compared to nornal – led to a temporary increase in the total staff of the Royal Engineers Postal Section from 900 to 1500 men. 44 additional lorries were also provided for postal work, plus two for each Divisional Supply Column and six for the Lines of Communication.

Long period of entrenched warfare and growth of the BEF

Suitable premises for a Base Post Office and loading facilities was obtained at the Gare Maritime in Boulogne, and all letter mail was directed there from 9 February 1915. Parcel mail remained at Le Havre until it to moved to Boulogne in March 1915. This change reduced the length of time for mail to get from London to the divisional railheads by about 36 hours. Local mail for the Le Havre and Rouen General Base Depots continued to be routed to Le Havre. Post Offices were established for the Base Depots at Harfleur (for Le Havre), Bruyères (for Rouen) and Etaples. These offices handled mail for the many men held as drafts at the Infantry Base Depots and similar camps.

The postal lorries also began to operate as semi-independent units within each Divisional Supply Column and could run to a different operating cycle, such that the mail could be carried separately from the vast range of other supplies and could be delivered some 24 hours earlier.

In addition to the bulk mail which went to units of the divisions, a postal lorry service was established to take mail addressed for the various formation headquarters. It would go from the Boulogne Depot to the headquarters of each Army, with branch services taking it on to each Corps headquarters. Later on, this system was extended to Divisional and even Brigade headquarters. Letters which left London in the morning were delivered to each Brigade headquarters in France by 7pm the same day. It was possible for the staff of a Brigade headquarters to receive and English newspaper on the same day it was published. An extraordinary feat.

In April 1915, new Assistant Directors of Postal Services were established within each Army Headquarters.

In May 1915, a reorganisation of the supply railway network into Northern and Southern Lines took place. Mail for the divisions serviced by the latter was routed via the Southern Regulating Station at Abbeville.

As the BEF grew, new Armies were established. On 17 June 1915, Calais was opened as a Base Port for mail for Second Army, with a Base Post Office at Gare Maritime. In September 1915, parcel mail for Third Army was routed via Le Havre (letter traffic continued via Boulogne) and this arrangement lasted until May 1916 when it moved via Boulogne. Third Army was difficult at first as it was situated in the Somme sector, and at that time physically separate from the rest of the BEF. From May 1916, all mail for Fourth Army went via Le Havre, and later the Fifth Army mail went via a Regulating Station at Romescamps.

The system evolved, with more of the sorting and distribution being pushed down the chain of command to the divisions. The Base Post Offices became limited to receiving and distributing the bulk unit mails and newspapers received from England. New semi-stationary Post Offices began to be added to deal with the mail for the increasing numbers of lines of communication and other troops working in rear areas under Corps or Army command. It was reported that it was not uncommon for one of these offices to handle 30,000 letters per day, and handle many transactions purchasing or cashing Postal Orders and War Savings Certificates.

By October 1916, the system was handling typically 10 million letters from home per week, along with almost a million parcels per week, as well as the 5 million letters and cards coming home from soldiers and nurses in the field. And of course, the units and individuals for which the mail was intended were raraly in one place for long …

A flavour of the administrative complexity of keeping the postal service operating efficiently. From an article in the “East of Fife Record” of Thursday 19 October 1916 (British Newspaper Archive).

The general system of distribution for mail going to units under divisional command was now as follows:

  • Post was sent to the London depot, where it was sorted into bags for each unit. With the exception of the smallest units, this was generally at a rate of one bag for each unit each day. (Registered Post did not go into these bags but was sent in a bag for the relevant Railhead, from where it would be sent to the relevant Field Post Office for delivery.)
  • Each bag was given a label, which bore the name of the unit and a code which designated the railway truck onto which it was to be loaded at the Base Port in France). Each truck was in a designated train going to a designated Railhead. Labels for bags of mail for units on the Lines of Communication were marked with the name of the unit and the relevant Stationary Post Office.
  • Three special mail trains ran daily from London to the Channel Ports (usually two from Victoria to Folkestone and one from Marylebone to Southampton) and then the bags were shipped to France.
  • The bags were loaded onto the waiting railway trucks, which went to the Divisional and Corps Railheads. Mail for the units of a Division would generally fill one railway truck per day.
  • On arrival at the Railhead, the mail was taken over by the Railhead Field Post Office staff. The bags would then be taken to the Divisional Refilling Point by the two lorries allocated to the Divisional Supply Column (a unit of the Army Service Corps) for this purpose.
  • The Field Post Office with the HQ Company of the Divisional Train would then take over and manage the distribution to the units of the division, with those for the infantry going through Brigade Field Post Offices.

In May 1916, the Directorate commanding the service in France was reorganised, being sub-divided into two sections: Northern Section included First and Second Armies, the northern ports and lines of communication; Southern Section included Third and Fourth Armies, the southern ports and lines of communication. Each section had a Deputy Director as its head, with Assistant Directors at General Headquarters, Headquarters Inspector-General of Communications, Boulogne, Calais, Le Havre and Rouen. Deputy Directors were established at Saint-Omer for Northern section and Abbeville for Southern. Divisional Supervisors were also added: they were either Warrant Officers or Company Quartermaster Sergeants.

It was reported that at Christmas 1916, the service handled 4.5 million parcels for the troops.

Part of a page from the war diary of the Deputy Director of Army Postal Services HQ BEF (Northern Sector) (National Archives WO95/5500 Crown Copyright). Transport timetables April 1918. Mail being moved in France by rail, lorry and water. Note the codes APO for Army Post Office and S for Stationary Post Office. R is not shown on this imag but means Railhead.

Widening war

With the addition of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and British Salonika Force in 1915, additional complications and demands arose for the postal service. For a considerable time, mail would continue to be sent via Boulogne in France and thence via a new depot set up at Marseilles to support Salonika. Mail supply chains were also established for Egypt (and later Palestine), East Africa, Mesopotamia, Italy, and other theatres. The late campaign in North Russia posed unusual problems of distance and environment. A 300-mile sleigh service was established around the White Sea, for example.

Sorting the mail at a Field Post Office, Salonika, January, 1917. Imperial War Museum photograph Q32717. The letters and parcels in the bags had initially been sorted in London.

In May 1917, nine female sorters of the Queen Mary’s Auxiliary Army Corps began to be employed by the Army Post Service at the Advanced Base Post Office at Saint-Omer. By February 1919, a total of 134 such women were employed at army post offices at the bases and on the lines of communication in France and Flanders.

By mid-1917, the Army Postal Service employed 85 officers and approximately 4000 other ranks. In London, in addition to civilian staff it employed some 140 discharged soldiers and 700 temporary female sorters.

An air mail service to Cologne was established in December 1918 to support the Army of Occupation on the Rhine, and a sea route from Folkestone to Cologne began on 1 March 1919..

Casualties

The records of the Commonwealth Graves Commission include 508 men who lost their lives while serving with the Australian, Canadian and Indian Army Postal Services, of which all but 15 were Indian. The latter mostly died in India, Mesopotamia or Africa but there are examples in France: the earliest is a Follower 68 Pershotam Ram, a clerk, who died on 28 February 1915. He died of pneumonia and is buried in Meerut Military Cemetery at St. Martin-les-Boulogne. Pershotam was the son of Sarup Singh, of Karriala, Chakwal, Jhelum, Punjab.

The Australian and Canadian men’s service records exist and can be downloaded free of charge from National Archives Australian and Libraries and Archives Canada.

An example from the Canadian records is Sergeant 108117 Arthur William Britton. He had been transferred to the Postal Service from 3rd Canadian Mounted Rifles in August 1916 and from 11 March 1917 was attached to the 6th Canadian Brigade Field Post Office. He was killed in action on 24 March 1917 and lies in Ecoivres Military Cemetery, not far from Vimy Ridge in France. Born in London, he was 29 and a resident of North Edmonton, Alberta.

The British casualties are not so straightforward to locate as they are recorded under the Royal Engineers.

The Base Post Office for the Salonika theatre of war was established in an old drapery warehouse at 39 Rue Franque, but it was destroyed in the great fire which swept the city on 19 August 1917, although apparenetly no mail was lost. A new office was set up at English Quay.

The Base Post Office at Calais was destroyed in an air raid in January 1918, but was re-established and soon re-opened on the same site.

The Army Postal Service in London

The facilities in London, initially just two rooms at the GPO at Mount Pleasant, expanded along with the rest of the army. The Regent’s Park complex along grew to over 300,000 square feet of space.

  • Army Letter Office Number 1, New GPO at King Edward’s Buildings, handled all letter post for the British Expeditionary Force except for Colonial and Indian contingents, and registered letters.
  • Army Letter Post Office Number 2, Regent’s Park, handled all letter post for the other Expeditionary Forces, and letter post for the Indian and South African contingents of tthe British Expeditionary Force
  • Dominions Army Letter Office, GPO at Mount Pleasant, handled all letter post for the Canadian and New Zealand forces, and parcels for the New Zealanders
  • Army Parcel Office, Regent’s Park, handled all parcels for the British Expeditionary Force except for the New Zealanders
  • Australian Army Post Office, Midland Goods Station, St. Pancras, handled all letter and parcel post for the Australian forces
  • Army Returned Letter and Parcel Office, GPO at Mount Pleasant, handled all undelivered post from all forces.

Sources

National Archives WO161/114
British Newspaper Museum
Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Links

Royal Engineers

Useful guide to army postmarks and locations of post offices

Information from Postal Museum