The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-10-08
THE TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
INF0R MATlON loURiEAU
By FREDERIC }. HAsKIN. Director.
Washington, ID. C.
MILITARY MAIL

pack it right!
This is the behest of an overworked
postoffice department to the Amerl-
can public. Since the middle of last
month camps equivalent, from the
postoffice point of view, to about
sixty good-sized cities, have sprung
into being in the United States. me
order to provide these with postolllces
was issued on August 8, and by August
mail was being delivered to them
regularly from their own pr1nch
offices. Among the many moDdlza-
lions of Industrial and governmental
forces that have taken place s1hce
America entered the war, TINS was not
the least expeditions.
Including national guard, national
army. and regular army camps and
environments, training camps, naval
and marine stations, the postoftlc2 oe-
partment now has sixty new. oranch
postofffces, and many of them servo
forty to fifty thousand men each
Some of them, of course. have only
small part of their quotas at present
but at those under construction there
are seven to ten thousand Workmen
each to serve.
Camps Equal Big Cities.
A camp of forty thousand man is
equal in its demands upon the post
office department to a city of about
10000 people, for only about one
person in five of average population
is a writer and receiver of letters, but
every soldier is writer and receiver
of Ietters-yea, and of many other
things. Cakes and candy and cigars,
chicken salad and grapes, and fried
chicken and roast ham and stlffed
olives, and other daintieS wrought by
fair fingers, too numerous to mention,
too squashy to handle, too perishable
to keep, often too poorly packed for
even the most patient and patriotic of
mailmen to successfully transport. are
pouring into the camps by the ton.
One camp-Camp Custer, which
has not yet all of its quotas re-
ceiving no less than fifteen tons of
packa ge mail per day, and large
part of this is in the shape of good
things from home, daintily wrapped
in tissue paper, but often all unpro-
tected again the the harsh vicissitudes
of railway travel from some town in
| the north to some cantonment in the
south. The boys in KHAKI are getting
almost enough cake and fried chicken
to sustain life without help from the
government, but some of this volun-
! teer grub is hardly recognize bic when
it arrives. So notice is hereby served
that if you want to mitigate the hor-
rors of war for Tommy by sending
him a quart of homemade syllabUb
or an angel cake, you must pack the
Sc me in a tin or wooden box, and in
sulate it with paper against the jars
and accidents of transportation.
Be Explicit in Addresses.
Furthermore, your offering must be
| correctly addressed, or the chances
are against it ever arriving at all.
Great quantities of mail are reach
| ing all of the environments addressed
| simply to Thomas Jones, Camp Meade,
| Md. There is no excuse for this un-
! less it is urgently necessary that you
| communicate with Thomas during the
/ brief period after his arrival and be-
! fore he has been assigned to his COM
pany and regiment. For after he is
assigned, it is only by company and
regiment that he can be identified.
| If he is in the regular army, there
| fore, he must be addressed as Pri-
| vate Thomas Jones, Company A, 64th
Infantry, Camp Lee, Virginia If he
4 is with the eXpeditionary forces, for
| Camp Lee should be substituted
American EXpeditiOnary Forces. If
| Thomas is in the national guard, he
/ should be addressed the same way
| with the addition of the state organi-
! cation from which he came, thus:
| Private Thomas Jones, Company B,
| 151st Infantry (69th N W Camp
| Lee, Virginia. If he is in the national
/ or draft army, he should be addressed
! in the same with the addition of his
state, thus: Private Thomas Jones,
| Company c, 130th Infantry On. j.,
Camp Lee, Va.
How Mail May Be Delayed.
Mail which is not addressed by COM
pany and regiment will certainly be
! long delayed and may be returned to
sender as unbelievable. Instructions
are being sent to postmasters not to
receive package mail unless it is ad-
dressed by company and regiment.
These rulings are made necessary
! by the method which has been adopted
| for handling the mail of these sixty
new soldier cities. The war depart
ment provides at each of the camps
! and environments a building one hun
dred by forty-eight feet in size to be
/ used as a postoffice. The postoffice
! department has to supply this post
office with employees and postoffice
/ furniture, and has to connect it up
with the federal postoffice system by
way of the nearest first or second
| class postoffice. The military post
/ office becomes branch of this office
! similar to the branches maintained in
/ all large cities. The main postoffice
supplies it with stamps and keeps it's
! accounts but the branch has to do its
! own distributing and asserting of mail
1t Is impossible to maintain a gem
| eral delivery under these circum-
| stances, or for the postoffice employees
! to seek out each individual soldier
! and give him his mail. Accordingly
/ tho postofffce asserts the mail by regi-
ments and companies, and delivers the
! company patches into the hands of
| mail or8erlies" who are appointed
/ for the purpose. The mail orderly
acts as postman and sees that each
man in his company gets his mail.
Thus no machinery is provided in the
military branch postoffice for the de-
| livery of mail that is not addressed
/ by regiment and company. Such mail
will go to camp headquarters, and may
be delivered in the course of time
| from there.
How Employees Obtained for Mail.
In providing trained employees for
these military postoffiees, the post
| office department has adopted the in
teresting method of calling for vol
unteers from the large city postofffces
the only places from which trained