Military mail
In some cases, military personnel in a combat zone may post letters and packages to their home country free of charge.
[2] In 1795, Parliament granted the penny postage concession to soldiers and sailors of the British Army and Royal Navy.
[3] Four years later, in 1799, the Duke of York appointed Henry Darlot, an ‘intelligent clerk’ from the General Post Office (GPO) as the Army Postmaster to accompany his expedition to Helder.
The sergeants reported to the Duke of Wellington’s Superintendent of Military Communications, Major Scovell and later Lieutenant Colonel Sturgeon.
In response to demands made by Florence Nightingale, a method of transmitting money was devised to allow troops to transfer monies back to their families at home in the United Kingdom.
The unit received high praise from the commander-in-chief, who wrote: The formation of a purely military postal department has been a tried for the first time in this war.
I have much pleasure in bringing to the notice of the Secretary of State the admirable manner in which the Post Office Corps discharged its duties in Egypt … Their services have been so valuable that I hope a similar corps may be employed on any future occasion.At the end of World War I (1914–1918), the Royal Engineers (Postal Section), along with the Royal Air Force (RAF), helped to pioneer international airmail services, by setting up airmail routes between Folkestone, England and Cologne, Germany to service the British Army of the Rhine.
[7] The mission of BFPO is to "provide an efficient and effective Postal and Courier Service to sustain the fighting power of UK Armed Forces Worldwide.
"[8] When sending mail from the UK to a member of HM Forces serving overseas, the sender must address it to the appropriate BFPO number, not to the country in which that person is based.
Soldiers are not allowed to send mail from regular civil Post Offices even if their area of duty has such facilities.
The individual military services (Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard) are each, themselves, responsible for the costs, manpower, and facilities of mail that travels through their own department.
The MPS also supports mail delivery for U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas and to deployed personnel in combat zones worldwide.
USPS added Diplomatic Post Office (DPO) as a valid overseas address effective January 18, 2009.
The other approximately ninety overseas U.S. embassy post offices fall under the management oversight of the services and so are known as either APOs or FPOs.
