Chapter 4 No.4

The famous blind Postmaster-General, Henry Fawcett, inspected the corps at the General Post Office on July 26, and the officers with 50 men sailed on August 8, disembarking at Alexandria on August 21. Their first postal duties were undertaken at Alexandria and Ramleh, but two days after disembarkation they re-embarked, joining up with Lord Wolseley's main forces at Ismailia on August 26.

The base was at Ismailia, whence the post office corps sent out its branches, planting advanced base and field post offices connecting the base with the changing front, between which and the base a daily service was maintained. In September, shortly after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the Army and the Army Post Office reached Cairo, and re-embarked for home on October 7. The despatches gave high praise to the efficiency and useful service of the corps.

Three years later, Major Sturgeon (promoted in recognition of his services in Egypt, 1882) again commanded a corps of twenty N.C.O.'s and men, in Sir Gerald Graham's Suakim expedition of 1885. The corps left England on March 3, and returned on July 28, after a more difficult experience with the Suakim garrison than they had met with in the first Egyptian campaign.

Dongola Expedition. Of the Dongola Expeditionary Force under General Kitchener in 1896 we have no record of the use of English stamps, but Mr. H. H. Harland has shown us an interesting envelope with the postmark of Wadi-Halfa camp, the letter not being prepaid as no stamps were available (Fig. 23).

Fig. 23. Dongola Expeditionary Force.

South Africa, 1899-1902. Major Sturgeon was succeeded in the command of the Army Postal Corps by his second in command, Captain Viall. On the death of the latter (1890), Captain G. W. Treble of the London Postal Service took the command, which he held at the outbreak of the South African War in 1899, aided by Captain W. Price (now Colonel W. Price, C.M.G., in command of the Army Post Office with the British Expeditionary Force in France) and Lieutenant H. M'Clintock, these latter officers belonging to the Secretary's Office of the G.P.O., London. A first portion of the company, with Captain Treble, left England with General Buller and his staff, and the rest followed on October 21, and several further detachments went out with later contingents. In South Africa they had a very wide area to cover. At the outset Captain Treble established himself with the headquarters of the Inspector General of Communications in Cape Colony, and moved about keeping close touch with the movements of the forces, an important part of his duties being to forward to the various offices the information necessary to ensure the correct circulation of the mails. Captain Price was at Cape Town, and Lieutenant M'Clintock at Pietermaritzburg.

The British military mails were made up in the London G.P.O. in special bags addressed to the Army Post Office, and sent to the G.P.O. at Cape Town, in which building the detachment of the Army Postal Corps under Captain Price had established its base office. The bags containing military mails were handed over to the Army Base Post Office at Cape Town whence they were distributed to the various military post offices established at the centres of the troops, and to field post offices with each Brigade or Division in the field. In the return direction the soldiers' letters were handed in at field post offices and forwarded through various channels, sometimes ordinary and ofttimes military to the base at Cape Town, whence they were despatched to England in the ordinary way.

Early in 1900 the average weekly mail from London to the Field Forces was 150 bags of letters, postcards, etc., and 60 boxes of parcels; the incoming mail from the Field Forces was 11 bags of letters per week. In a letter dated from Cape Town, February 27, from Lieutenant Preece, who went out with reinforcements for the Army Post Office Corps in February, are some interesting glimpses of the difficulties of the work of this service[2]:

"Price, of the Post Office Corps, met us and told us (Captain) Palmer was to leave at once for Kimberley with 17 men (Captain) Labouchere and (Lieut.) Curtis to proceed on to Natal with 50 men, and I was to take the remainder ashore here (Cape Town) and stop to help at the base. At 9.30 on Monday morning I marched off with my 57 men to the main barracks and bid good-bye to the good ship 'Canada' and her merry cargo. After lodging the men in barracks I went off to the G.P.O., where I found Price and his 40 men ensconced in one huge wing, overwhelmed with work, and at breaking-down point. The mails every week increase now, and we have 250,000 pieces of mail matter to sort and distribute every week, over a country larger than France, among a shifting population of soldiers, each of whom expects to get his letters as easily as he gets his rations. It is a vast job, and we have done wonderfully so far with a totally inadequate staff. We have come in the nick of time. The recent movements (the advance of Lord Roberts from Modder River, relief of Ladysmith, etc.) have caused chaos among our mails. We receive and send telegrams every hour either to a field post office or to headquarter staffs. The latter order immediate reinforcement at Modder River, and Price has decided to send me up with more men to proceed to Paardeberg, or wherever the troops are, to get things straight."

[2] St. Martins le Grand, vol. x., page 201.

The preliminary arrangements necessitated by the vast area of the operations provided for two base offices, the one in Cape Colony and the other in Natal, and 43 field post offices, and by June, 1900, the Army Postal Corps was composed of ten officers and 400 N.C.O.'s and men, exclusive of post office telegraphists, etc., serving with the Royal Engineers. Many interesting statistics of the mails at different periods of the war have been given in various records, but it will suffice to quote some general ones on the authority of the Postmaster-General. His forty-sixth report, 1900, states:

During eight months of the Crimean War, 362,000 letters were sent out, and 345,000 were sent home. During a similar period of the war in South Africa 5,629,938 letters were sent out, and 2,731,559 were sent home.

The work of the corps was not undisturbed by the depredations of the enemy, and not infrequently the members of the corps had to defend the mails in their charge along with the guards provided by the military. On June 7, 1900, General De Wet, who has lately extinguished the admiration in which Britons held him for his brilliant and elusive tactics, by his treachery in the present war, swooped down with 1200 men and 5 guns on Roodewal Station where Lieutenant Preece had 2000 bags, a several weeks' accumulation of mails for Lord Roberts' main army. There were 17 men of the Army Postal Corps, and these, with about 160 men in charge of supplies, etc., had to defend the station. Two of the seventeen were killed, and Lieutenant Preece and the remainder of his gallant little corps were taken prisoners. The 2000 mail bags were used as a barricade. It is recorded that when the gallant little band surrendered, and De Wet, riding an English cavalry horse, came up, the Boer general was most polite and even kind in many ways, and expressed himself as "very sorry to do it," when asked not to destroy the letters and registered parcels. He said if he did not do so, his young Boers would open and read them and turn the letters of the soldiers into ridicule. The bags were opened, the contents strewed about, and the Boers possessed themselves of the valuables, while tobacco, cigarettes, cakes, chocolates were so plentifully strewed about that the young Boers even invited their prisoners to help themselves, as the General was going to burn everything. And he did burn the entire station.

In his forty-seventh report (1901) the Postmaster-General states:

The Army Post Office is still in operation in South Africa. The staff now consists of 7 officers and about 540 men. The weekly mail for the Army Post Office contains on an average 204,000 letters and 115,300 packets of printed matter; and it is estimated that during the year ended 31st March, 1901, 11,551,300 letters were sent to the troops and 9,250,000 were received from them. During the same period the parcels sent out to the forces in South Africa by post amounted to 534,245, the largest number despatched on any one occasion, namely, on the 1st of December, 1900, being 19,672. About 8745 such parcels are now sent each week.

As to the magnitude and difficulties of the work of the Army Post Office, I cannot do better than quote the following paragraph from Earl Roberts' despatch of the 16th August last:-

"The magnitude of the task set the Military Postal Service may be appreciated when it is realised that the Army Mails from England have exceeded in bulk the whole of the mails arriving for the inhabitants of Cape Colony and Natal, and contained each week little short of 750,000 letters, newspapers, and parcels for the troops. No little credit is therefore due to the department under Major Treble in the first few months, and for the greater part of the time under Lieut.-Colonel J. Greer, Director of Military Postal Services, for the way in which it has endeavoured to cope with the vast quantity of correspondence, bearing in mind the incessant manner in which the troops have been moved about the country, the transport difficulties which had to be encountered, the want of postal experience in the bulk of the personnel of the corps, and the inadequacy of the establishments laid down for the several organisations."

His Majesty has been pleased to confer the honour of C.M.G. on Messrs. Greer and Treble in acknowledgment of their services.

The forty-eighth report (1902) mentions no change of any importance in the Army Postal Service in South Africa, and gives the weekly average mail from England as 184,000 letters and 143,600 packets of printed matter: the total number of letters for the year ended March 31, 1902, was 10,774,000 outward, and 8,372,000 homeward, showing a decrease compared with previous returns. During the same period 528,000 parcels were sent out.

The last official reference to the Army Postal Service in South Africa is contained in the forty-ninth (1903) report, announcing its withdrawal, postal communications with the troops still on service in the old colonies and the new ones being carried on through the Colonial Post Offices under the ordinary regulations. The Peace was declared May 31, 1902.

The war in South Africa left its impress on many pages of the stamp collector's album, but at this juncture we are chiefly concerned with the immediate work of the British military postal service. Collectors have followed the use of the stamps of the home country into the distant fields of operations by means of the various postmarks which are summarised as follows from the collection of Captain Guy R. Crouch, of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry[3]:

[3] The Postage Stamp, vol. XIV., pp. 234-237.

24 ? ? 25

26 ? ? 27

Type 1 (Fig. 24). Office Numbers from 1 to 56, and 100. Used also at Cape Town base with initials BO (Base Office) and an asterisk (sometimes omitted) in lieu of the office number. Also at sub-base offices with larger office numerals 1 to 9.

Type 2 (Figs. 25, 26). Commonly without the year being noted, as in the first illustration but also found with the year as in the second illustration of this mark. It has been largely supposed, but without much, if any, foundation that these year-less marks originated in Ladysmith during the siege, but little correspondence can have been passed out of the town during that period, and the origin of many of these marks is known not to have been Ladysmith.

Type 3 (Fig. 27). Used in sub-offices supplementary to type 1, found stamped in blue-green as well as in black. Office numbers 41-60.

28 ? ? 29

Type 4 (Fig. 28). Used in Base Office at Cape Town.

Type 5 (Fig. 29). A locally made rubber-stamp cancellation found in several sub-varieties.

30 ? ? 31

Type 6 (Fig. 30). Used in the field post offices attached to the Natal Field Force with name of place or number.

Type 7 is similar to type 2 but lettered NATAL FIELD FORCE, found in black and in violet.

Type 8, a newspaper cancellation, with NFF (Natal Field Force) in white letters on a black ground, circular shape.

30A

Type 9 (Fig. 30A). A thick lined circle, 20 mm. in diameter, lettered F.P.O. (Field Post Office) and a number, also used for newspapers.

Type 10. An almost circular obliteration lettered P.O.A. (Post Office, Africa) with the number 43, a bracket at each side and two thick bars at top and at bottom.

Type 11 (Fig. 31). Used in travelling post offices (T.P.O.), struck in black or violet. The travelling post offices are "EAST NO. 1," "MIDLAND," "WESTERN," and "NORTHERN."