MAIL DAY IN EGYPT

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 76, 27 September 1916, Page 8

MAIL DAY IN EGYPT

"Mail day at the front" is interestingly described by -Sergt:-Major . _E. G. Shearer, who left Wellington with the 12th Reinforcement, in a letter to his mother: —"You nearly all mention in your letters," he \vrites, "that you are expecting to receive a mail in a day or two, but you can be quite certain that the mail from us is not awaited with so much eagerness or is so much talked about as the mail to us. There is not a single day goes ,by here without some mention being made of mail. When a mail arrives everybody is in a state of nervous excitement for about twentyfour hours afterwards, and then it takes another two or three days for such queries as : 'Is there any more mail ?' 'Is all the mail sorted yet?' 'I'm expecting another letter, are you sure it has all been given out ?' and such, like to die out : and by that time they are all looking^ for the next mail, wondering when it is going to arrive, and if it will be a large one, etc. So there is absolutely no chance of forgetting that there are such things as letters to keep ono in touch with relatives and friends left behind. Oh, yes! .Mail day is a gala day hero all right, and the sergeants are all first-class letter i sorters now. You should see us when we get word, through the orderly sergeant, that a mail will be ready—sorted— at a certain hour. Half an hour before tbe time laid down there is a queue formed outside the post office cf fatigue men waiting to carry the mail sacks over to the lines of the different companies; and at about the' same time, could you look in the sergeants' tent, you would see six buckets in the centre of the floor, and the sergeants sitting round anxiously awaiting the aforementioned mail sacks, and speculating and barracking one another about the number of letters each is going to receive. Then a. last, amid -loud cheering, the orderlies burst into the tents witb the bags. It is. the work of half a second to cut the string round the bundle of letters, and sort feverishly, with everybody talking at once, and about half the company waiting outside, tuned up to the highest pitch of excitement. At last it is" sorted—each pla-toon-sergeant has his platoon's mail in a bucket (there is another one filled with officers' mail, which is no doubt awaited just as eagerly, though with less outward show of excitement); and the last bucket contains our own mail—to our minds the most important bucket of the six. And so it goes on, as I said, for about twenty-four hours, the next step being the comparing of news, and sympathising with one another over letters expected but not received. That is mail day in Egypt, as well as I can describe it." *