“Mail Manners”

This little bit of regalia should bring you ol’ Salts back to the days of Snail Mail and how important it was to get those letters properly addressed and to the right people and visa-versa! This is from an old article pulled up out of the All Hands Magazine somewhere back during the last Big War (WWII)!! Hope you enjoy…

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Remind your friends and family that when sending mail to your ship it will always be received in the ports of New York or San Francisco, the FPOs there naturally get the information first and then forward it immediately to Washington for distribution to other Navy Post Offices.  When the destination of a unit is temporarily undetermined, its mail in the FPO goes into a pouch in the “hold section” and is not dispatched until the unit’s next address is received. 

For the sake of security, a so-called locator system is used in dispatching Navy mail.  Each ship and activity has a locator number (changed frequently) to which its mail is addressed after it is put in the pouches. 

One of the most difficult FPO jobs is the handling of “prints.”  Naval personnel are subject to constant shifts throughout the world, and all too often newspaper and magazine publishers have only the initial Navy address of their subscribers in service.  Publishers are notified, by postage due notice from the FPO, when “print” addresses are incorrect.  Postal Affairs continues, meanwhile, to advise naval personnel to keep publishers informed of their changes of address and to request discontinuance of publications they do not want. 

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When ships reach American ports, they find their mail waiting for them.  The FPO, informed in advance of the anticipated ship arrivals, loads the mail for each ship on trucks and sends it to the docks.  If the ship is not yet in port, the mail is not taken back to the FPO.  The mail truck waits. Sometimes, the mail is loaded on small craft at the docks and sent out to the waiting ships. 

At the New York FPO, 1944’s unprecedented Christmas mail load caused a severe case of growing pains which was cured only by moving the parcel post section to Navy Pier 51 on the Hudson River.  The pier has two decks and a rood (but little in the way of bulkheads), is about three city blocks in length, and offers to all hands the opportunity of duty in the open spaces.  Winter had come to New York and temperatures on the pier were frequently sub-freezing.

Parcel post crews at San Francisco and New York each operate a “scavenger department” where damaged or improperly wrapped packages from home are rewrapped. 

The biggest trouble with Navy parcel post is that so much of it is wrapped in packages that simply won’t stand the gaff, and also that parents and wives and friends insist on sending perishable foodstuffs to naval personnel overseas.  The food deteriorates with handling and changes in the weather. 

 
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V-mail is the most practical mail service the Navy offers.  It receives the highest priority and reduces the mail transportation problem.

Basically, the V-mail principle is very simple.  Instead of sending the letter itself, which is bulky and (when weighed in the millions) heavy, the Navy simply photographs the letter onto a tiny film and then gives the addressee a photographic print of the letter.