LETTERS FOR MIDDLE EAST

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 45, 17 November 1941, Page 10

LETTERS FOR MIDDLE EAST

Quick Airmail Dispatch A statement that recent airmail dispatches for tile Middie East were taking only ten days to reach the Base Post Office, was made on Saturday by the Postmaster-General, Mr. Webb. He added that under existing conditions that was particularly good. Mr. Webb said that it meant that many soldiers were receiving their airmail letters within a fortnight R tter dispatch from New Zealand. lliough a little time must necessarily elapse between tlie time of receipt of the airmails in the Middle East an'd. their delivery to units, it could be said that the soldiers were receiving tbeir news from home while it was still fresh. “Surface mails, on the other hand, which carry the newspapers and parcels for the troops, are slow,” said Mr. Webb. “Some parcel and newspaper mails take as long as three months on their journey. For the last five months the average time was 60 days. Further, though surface dispatches are .made frequently and regularly, the maiis do not always reach their destination in’ the order of their dispatch. There is likely to be little improvement, because shipping facilities are not always available, and only on infrequent occasions are direct dispatches possible. Generally, surface mails have to be transhipped en route, sometimes more than once, and transhipment means delay.” Mr. Webb added that senders in New Zealand should not be unduly apprehensive if t’ ?y received advice that their parcels bad not reached their soldier relatives and friends in the Middle East as early as they expected. On top of transmission delays there was the delay inseparable from “carding” parcels for readdressing, and in this redirection work parcels had to take second place to letters. After being readdressed, parcels ba’d to be forwarded ■?o the units, many of which, as was now well known, were far afield in the desert.