HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAGHS

Army Post Office at Constantinople 1855. GPO staff were seconded to the Army during the Crimean War (1854-6). Army Post Offices were established in Constantinople, Scutari, Varna and Balaclava. Edward Smith was appointed as Army Postmaster.

Colonel John Lowther du Plat Taylor CB VD (1829-1904) - Founder of the Army Post Office Corps .

He trained at the RMA Sandhurst, then served in Ceylon and Mauritius, before joining the Consular Service in 1844. He was posted to China but was invalided back to Britain after just two years service.

He joined the General Post Office (GPO) in 1852 and worked in the Secretary's Department, as a Private Secretary to the Postmaster General.

In 1860 he joined the Civil Service Rifle Volunteers (CSRV) and was prompted to Captain two years later, the same year that his Post Office Companies CSRV won first prize at annual camp, his prize was a pair of binoculars which are now on display in the RE Museum. By 1865 he held the rank of Major.

He was actively involved in the nationalisation of the private telegraph companies in 1870 after which he quit the GPO to become the Secretary of the East and West India Dock Company.

He raised the 49th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers in 1868 and was its Commanding Officer from 1868 to 1896. In 1882 he founded the Army Post Office Corps of which he was appointed honorary colonel on 27 Feb 1901. He died on 5 Mar 1904 and was buried with full military honours at Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, Surrey.

The Army Post Office Corps were called to active service as part of the Egpytian Expedition in 1882. A company of APOC departed on board the British Prince under the command of Capt Sturgeon. Army post offices were established in Alexandria, Port Said, and Ismailia. The Commander of the expedition, General Garnet Worsley said of the APOC, that; "the formation of a purely military postal department has been tried for the first time in this war. It has been very successfully..."

This two pictures were bought in St Albans by Mrs Sarah Cash (ex-RE PCS Officer) and show a Postal Unit in Egypt in 1917.

A Base Army Post Office was established in the Old Bourse Building, Alexandria Egpyt in 1915. Postal Units were formed as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (E.E.F) in 1916 under the command of Col P Warren. Those photographs are probably of a Divisional Post Unit.

Thirteen divisional Postal Units were formed and they accompanied their divisions on a gradual advance from Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula to the borders of Palestine. After victory against the Turks in 1918 there was a considerable expansion of the APS; the existing Travelling Post Office (TPO) which ran from Alexandria to Palestine was augmented by sea links from Port Said to Haifa, Beirut and Tripoli. In 1919 an airmail service was established for official mail between Cairo and Aboukir, later this was extended to include Ramleh.

This photograph comes from a group of albums containing pictures of WW1 found in the PCS Archive. It shows two QMAAC women standing behind an RE PS Officer. It was taken in France in 1918.

By 1917 the war of attrition in Europe was beginning to tell and there were severe shortages of able-bodied men to fight in the front line units. To address this short fall, there was a constant trawl of all units for fit men to transfer to combat units. The Royal Engineers (Postal Section) like other logistic units were not exempted from this trawling process, and therefore they lost men to the front line units and in turn found themselves under pressure. To cover for the lost of these men, it was decided that women should fill their places. A notice was posted in the Post Office Circular inviting Temporary Female Sorters, Temporary Sorting Clerks, and Sub-Office Assistants between the ages 20 and 40 with at least four months’ service with the GPO to sign up for an engagement with the WAAC to serve with the APS in France for twelve months or the duration of the war, which ever was the longer. Those who volunteered were given some postal training at the Home Depot, Regents Park London, which also included elementary instruction in hygiene and discipline – i.e. ‘bull’ and ‘square bashing’.

The first draft of Postal WAACs arrived in France in May 1917 and they were employed in the rear area stationary Army Post Offices and the Base Army Post Offices (BAPO) at Le Havre, Bologne and Calais. They wore WAAC uniform, a dark karki dress, stockings, shoes and hat, or a WAAC tunic and long skirt, with a shirt and tie worn under the tunic and a brimmed hat as head dress, they were given an annual uniform purchase allowance of £ 4, as well as an extra £1.10s on enrolment to buy a great coat.

On the 9 April 1918, as a mark of appreciation for the good services rendered by the WAAC both at home and abroad, Queen Mary assumed the position and title of commander-in-chief of the corps, which thereafter bore the name Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps (QMAAC). More can be found on the Regimental page.

During the Second World War, Postal units were formed to provide postal support to the East and West African divisions fighting with the British Army in Burma. These units were managed by RE (PS) Officers and NCOs who were sent out to Africa to join their respective units prior to their formation's embarkation to the Far East.

The photograph to the right shows FAL Laws (a RE (PS) NCO)and an African postal worker outside an Army Post Office for the East African Div somewhere in India in 1945.