AIR MAIL LETTER CARDS

Grey River Argus, 21 June 1944, Page 6

AIR MAIL LETTER CARDS

COMMUNICATION WITH FORCES OVERSEAS

WELLINGTON June 20. The Postmaster-General- in . P. C. Webb) to-day announced th ffi traduction as from June 26 of an an mail letter card service fox next _ kin desiring to commun.cate . members of the Armed Forces ~ - eluding the Merchant Navy) serv■ g in the United Kingdom, the Med te ranean area, the Middle East, , Ceylon, and parts of Afl?Cdpostage is 6d, which must be alhxea by the sender. Cards are available at all Post Offices at a cost of ffi each. The Minister said that only a limited weight of mail could be carried by the special air service. It was therefore necessary, in the meantime at least, to restrict the posting of an mail letter cards to one a week to any one addressee, who for the return service to New Zealand was being restricted to the same number. In the circumstances the service was being made available at present primarily for next-of-kin, who were urged to post tJhe cards not more frequently than once a week. If the weight limit that had been allocated to New Zealand were, exceeded, it would be necessary to send the excess mail by surface means. Enclosures such as photographs, newspaper cuttings, etc., could not be permitted. Coincident with the introduce on of this service, the postage rates for letter cards addressed to Naw personnel serving overseas, formerly 3d each will be increased to 6d each. The new service for cards addressed to Naw personnel will, however, provide for quicker transmission to the addressees, as previously surface transport was necessary over an knDortant section of the route. The Minister added that the airgraph service would be maintained, and members of the public wera urged to make increasing use of it for communications to civilians and members of the forces overseas, s'nee it had the very great advantage of reducing the weight of letters to be carried. In regard to soeed of transmission, ttm airgraoh serv'ce would be little inferior to the air mail letter card service. Moreover there was no limit to the number of communicat'ons that could be handled bv the airgraph service. Full details of the air mail' letter card service are available at all Dost offices.