MAIL-DAY SCENES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Issue 2, 12 April 1940, Page 3

MAIL-DAY SCENES

WITH OUR TROOPS IN EGYPT | (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service). j March 12. Tlic sound of this eager cry iin the tent lines of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force is pretty sure to mean only one thing—that another big New Zealand mail lias arrived. Letters from home seem unable to come too often for us, and were those who wrote them to witness the excitement they bring to j the camp they would know that the time had been well spent. Just when we are beginning to wonder how far away the next mail can be. someone comes hurrying to his tent with the news that a truck laden with bulky mail bags has just pulled up at the Division's post office. After that it's merely a mat* ter of time before the first letters have been sorted and gathered in the eager hands. Delivery Method. In the last mail there were anything up to 20,000 letters for us— hundreds of thousands of words tell ing their stories of joys and sorrows and carrying tit-bits of news from distant homes, scattered little records of people and events which travel far through the camp by word of mouth before the day is out. Then, after the letters have been read and re-read, we are {"{ the mood to take out pencils rf,nd paper ourselves, and tell our side of the story. I looked behind these mail-day scenes on a visit to the Divisional post office the other day, and found that our 'letters arc handled there almost exactly as they would be in a new Zealand mail room. Incoming mail is divided into lette s and papers, which are redivided according to the units to which they are addressed. Finally they are divided again into the prirc'pal sections of each unit. Then the sorted mail goes out, cither by tiuck or lay runner, to the units'" orderly rooms, anl soon rer.c'ies the individual soldiers to whom it is addressed. Censorship. On normal days the postal staf? operates two deliveries of mail from local addresses and "England and other countries, together with air mail from the Dominion. Outward mails are collected from unit orderly rooms after they have been passed by the regimental censors and are checked in the post oft ice for censorship and correct postage. After the stamps have been cancelled, air and ordinary mails are separated and sorted according to principal post oft'ices. Then they go on their way to Base censorship and postal sections for shipment to their destinations. I was interested to learn that every letter I write home is handled solely by New Zealanders from the time it leaves me until the time it is read in New Zealand. In the case of mails addressed to other countries. British and Indian army postal sections cooperate with us in their despatch Smooth Organisation. The organi.a'ion of our post office is running like clockwork. The staff has a nucleus of New Zealand Post and Telegaph Department men, and the others have quickly fallen into the routine. It took the staff only three and a half hours to get our last big mail out for delivery. Now and then the postal men have mysteries to solve in the way of indefinite addresses, but they have the help of a card index system handed down from the New Zealand postal organisation in the Great War. Files compiled from embarkation lolls and routine orders enable them to trace every man to his correct address. And there is humour in the job at times. After all, it must sound funny to hear some of us, just alter one mail has been distributed, asking: "Any idea when the next mail arrives from New Zealand?"