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The famous blind Postmaster-General, Henry Fawcett, inspected the corps at the General Post Office on July 26, and the officers with 50 men sailed on August 8, disembarking at Alexandria on August 21. Their first postal duties were undertaken at Alexandria and Ramleh, but two days after disembarkation they re-embarked, joining up with Lord Wolseley's main forces at Ismailia on August 26. The base was at Ismailia, whence the post office corps sent out its branches, planting advanced base and field post offices connecting the base with the changing front, between which and the base a daily service was maintained. In September, shortly after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the Army and the Army Post Office reached Cairo, and re-embarked for home on October 7. The despatches gave high praise to the efficiency and useful service of the corps.

Three years later, Major Sturgeon (promoted in recognition of his services in Egypt, 1882) again commanded a corps of twenty N.C.O.'s and men, in Sir Gerald Graham's Suakim expedition of 1885. The corps left England on March 3, and returned on July 28, after a more difficult experience with the Suakim garrison than they had met with in the first Egyptian campaign.

Dongola Expedition. Of the Dongola Expeditionary Force under General Kitchener in 1896 we have no record of the use of English stamps, but Mr. H. H. Harland has shown us an interesting envelope with the postmark of Wadi-Halfa camp, the letter not being prepaid as no stamps were available (Fig. 23).

Fig. 23. Dongola Expeditionary Force.

South Africa, 1899-1902. Major Sturgeon was succeeded in the command of the Army Postal Corps by his second in command, Captain Viall. On the death of the latter (1890), Captain G. W. Treble of the London Postal Service took the command, which he held at the outbreak of the South African War in 1899, aided by Captain W. Price (now Colonel W. Price, C.M.G., in command of the Army Post Office with the British Expeditionary Force in France) and Lieutenant H. M'Clintock, these latter officers belonging to the Secretary's Office of the G.P.O., London. A first portion of the company, with Captain Treble, left England with General Buller and his staff, and the rest followed on October 21, and several

further detachments went out with later contingents. In South Africa they had a very wide area to cover. At the outset Captain Treble established himself with the headquarters of the Inspector General of Communications in Cape Colony, and moved about keeping close touch with the movements of the forces, an important part of his duties being to forward to the various offices the information necessary to ensure the correct circulation of the mails. Captain Price was at Cape Town, and Lieutenant M'Clintock at Pietermaritzburg.

The British military mails were made up in the London G.P.O. in special bags addressed to the Army Post Office, and sent to the G.P.O. at Cape Town, in which building the detachment of the Army Postal Corps under Captain Price had established its base office. The bags containing military mails were handed over to the Army Base Post Office at Cape Town whence they were distributed to the various military post offices established at the centres of the troops, and to field post offices with each Brigade or Division in the field. In the return direction the soldiers' letters were handed in at field post offices and forwarded through various channels, sometimes ordinary and ofttimes military to the base at Cape Town, whence they were despatched to England in the ordinary way.

Early in 1900 the average weekly mail from London to the Field Forces was 150 bags of letters, postcards, etc., and 60 boxes of parcels; the incoming mail from the Field Forces was 11 bags of letters per week. In a letter dated from Cape Town, February 27, from Lieutenant Preece, who went out with reinforcements for the Army Post Office Corps in February, are some interesting glimpses of the difficulties of the work of this service[2]:

The preliminary arrangements necessitated by the vast area of the operations provided for two base offices, the one in Cape Colony and the other in Natal, and 43 field post offices, and by June, 1900, the Army Postal Corps was composed of ten officers and 400 N.C.O.'s and men, exclusive of post office telegraphists, etc., serving with the Royal Engineers. Many interesting statistics of the mails at different periods of the war have been given in various records, but it will suffice to quote some general ones on the authority of the Postmaster-General. His forty-sixth report, 1900, states:

The work of the corps was not undisturbed by the depredations of the enemy, and not infrequently the members of the corps had to defend the mails in their charge along with the guards provided by the military. On June 7, 1900, General De Wet, who has lately extinguished the admiration in which Britons held him for his brilliant and elusive tactics, by his treachery in the present war, swooped down with 1200 men and 5 guns on Roodewal Station where Lieutenant Preece had 2000 bags, a several weeks' accumulation of mails for Lord Roberts' main army. There were 17 men of the Army Postal Corps, and these, with about 160 men in charge of supplies,