The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-08-18
How An Adequate
 Military Postal
 System Originated
INTERESTING HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH THE A. E. F.-PROBLEM DIFFICULT AND
 INTRICATE TO SOLVE.

had been transferred or sent to hosiptal or his unit had suddenly de- camped overnight, the chances are there wasn't a wisp of a record as to his whereabouts. The letter would be turned back to the Postal Express for delivery.
 Right here the chief source of diff iculty in handling army mail was ex- perienced- If the postal organization had been designed to include the mail orderly, the job of mailman to the army would have been much simpler The mail orderly is the most import ant link in the postal chain. With the mail orderly not in the postal organ izat:on the P. E. S. could neither insure his being properly qualified and directed nor fix responsibility on him nor make certain that his rec ords of forwarding addresses were properly kept.
 Re-addressinS Mail
 With the unde1ivered letter back in its hands, the Postal Express Service saw that it would have to seek else where for knowledge of" the ad- dressee's location. Just at this time the Central Records Office at Boar ges was getting ready for business. So Central Post Office was estab- hshed there and all mail returned to the P. E. S. for readdressing was forwarded to the new office. But it was naturally a herculean task to keep the Central Records Office files up to date. Often a letter thus re- directed would reach it's new destina- tion only to find the addressee still two jumps ahead.
 One of the most baffling problems the c. P. O. had to contend with was the handling of mail of casuals and replacements. Over 125, 900 of hcers and men came to France in casual and replacement units that ceased to exist as soon as they Joined the A. E. F. These units were broken up and the men scattered throughoat the army. It was necessary to make directory, search and readiness each individual letter coming to these men. Thus redirection work was tremen- dously increased at just that period when heavy troop movements and casualties were already flooding the c. P. o. with thousands of letters for men to do all their redirectory work at night so as not to interfere with the Central Records Office force in keeping the card files up to date It oAAOAAO DC I0IlAGIllD0I0u l1ldL IneTe were frequently hundreds of letters bearing identical names. There were 331 John Smiths in the A. E. F., 216 William Jones and S1 William Mur- phys. Often there was no possible way of discovering for which particu- lar Brown, Green or White a letter was intended.
 The P. E. s. tried suggestion, coer- cion and finally threat in an effort to persuade men to leave forwarding addresses whenever they moved and to write to the c. P. c. when they suspected their mail was being mis- directed. Cards were distributed in many organizations to be filled in by men who had recently been transfer red. At one large hospital 14,o0O cards were distributed and not one returned. At another point 500 cards were handed out and only 100 came back.
 Complains.
 No organization likes to admit that 1t ever receives complaints of its work. Every public service of any size does receive such complaints and very naturally the Postal Express Service was no exception. But 1t IS significant that there was only one complaint for every 500,000 letters handled.
 Anxious relatives in the States and home sick boys in France wrote in to ask about the non-recefpt of mail Investigation often showed that their complaints were premature or that the letters in question had been hope lessly misdirected. Sometimes the in quiry eIcited the shame-faced con fession from the soldier that he had been "too busy to write"