OUR SOLDIERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23951, 28 October 1939, Page 9

OUR SOLDIERS

POST OFFICE SERVICES EXTENSIVE CAMP ORGANISATION One of the special war activities of the Post Office is to facilitate the contact with home which is so much valued by the men now in the training camps in many parts of the Dominion. A large volume of mail and parcels business handled at the camps during the Great War provided the department with experience which prompts it to make generous provision on the present occasion. Post Offices are being constructed at Burnham, Trentham, Ngaruawahia and Papakura. They are to be as complete as those in many fair-sized towns, for the average soldier sends and receives more than the average number of communications. Each office will be a sub-post office under the department’s direction, staffed by its permanent officers. The hours of business take into account the military life, therefore. in addition to the usual 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. opening, each office will re-open in the evenings at 7 o’clock till 8.30. Ample public space and counterroom is being provided because every kind of postal business is transacted. Soldiers will be able to send telegrams—Trentham office, although conducted temporarily in marquees, is already equipped with the teleprinter machine telegraph apparatus—and a number of telephone boxes will be provided there as elsewhere, as well as the usual facilities for Post Office savings bank, the issue and cashing of money orders and postal notes, registration of letters and many other services rendered by the Post We do everything except pay old age pensions,” commented an experienced postmaster in charge of one of these offices. . , Distribution of mail matter is to the unit headquarters of the addressee, and prompt delivery can be facilitated if senders indicate name, rank, unit and the camp in the address. Men may be transferred from one camp to another, therefore soldiers should endeavour to keep their friends informed regarding changes of address, otherwise some delay must be caused through the necessity for redirection. The Post Office camp staffs will pay special attention to changes in camp personnel, in pursuance of its policy of doing its part in keeping our soldiers in touch with home.