MAILS FOR THE FRONT.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1916, Page 8

MAILS FOR THE FRONT.

SCME CAUSES OF DELAY. DIFFICULTY IN TRACING MEN. Some of tlie difficulties encountered by the postal officials at and near tlie front in the delivery of mail matter to New Zealand soldiers were explained to an Auckland Herald representative by Cap-' tain N. J. Fraser, deputy director of Base Records. Possibly a knowledge of the course of procedure, and of the difficulties that are often found to be in the way of speedy delivery, may tend to allay some of the irritation naturally felt by New Zealand correspondents on findin;; that their communications to their friends have either not reached their destination or liave only been delivered in a batch, representing the accumulation of several weeks' mails. "When a New Zealand mail for the front arrives in Egypt," said Captain Fraser, "it goes direct to the Base Records Office at Cairo. The first duty the postal officials undertake is to distriI bute the mail matter to the men known to be in hospital. As their addresses have in most cases reached the Base Records Office, that is a comparatively easy matter. If any man in hospital in Egypt fails to receive his mail promptly, it is due either to his own neglect to make use of the card that is left with him for the purpose 01 supplying his address, or else to his misfortune in not being in a condition to give attention to this point. It is with regard to the men at the fighting front that the chief difficulty arises. While our forces were at Gallipoli, the mails were usually sent first to Lemnos by a transport. From Lemnos they went on to tlie peninsula by the first convenient vessel. The delivery of the letter or packet was dependent upon the running of the boat, and often the finding of the soldier on the hillside. Quite possibly, when the mails arrived at the point where tlie addressee was supposed to be, no trace of liim could be found therelie had been removed to some other place on duty, and the quest had to be begun afresh. "possibly, again, he and the letter had crossed each other while he was hein" conveyed as a wounded or invalided soldier to one of the hospitals. When the inquiry at the last known place of duty proved ineffectual the undelivered letiers would be returned to the Egyptian base, and there re-sorted. By that time it might happen that the soldier's hospital whereabouts or his new place of dutv bad been traced, in which case lus

mail matter would be re-directed to him and finally delivered. With these unavoidable causes oi' delay, it was often weeks after the time when the mails first arrived in Egypt before their conreached some of the men at the front or in hospital, though the postal authorities were, all the time, keen to find the persons concerned. But whatever complaint may have been made, Captain Fraser has it from people who have "been and that the New Zealand postal service, in and about the JTediterraneaii, is e q", al 10 . an 3' of ' 1 military postal sen-ices m operation there, in regard to promptness and ' regularity of delivery.