The work accomplished by the Post Office during the Indian Mutiny has been described in a separate chapter. Every office situated within the wide area of the disturbances or on the line of march of the troops performed the functions of a field post office, the control of the arrangements devolving on the chief local civil or military authority in places where there was no departmental officer of sufficient seniority or rank to hold charge. The great services rendered by the Post Office horse transit and bullock train establishments to the Army were a prominent feature of the campaign. Separate field post offices accompanied the moving columns under Generals Havelock, Outram, Campbell, Hugh Rose, Hope Grant and other leaders. Twenty years later, when the Afghan war broke out, the Army had again to rely on the Post Office for the transport of mails and military stores for hundreds of miles through the Khyber and Bolan passes into Afghanistan.
The extension of the railways to the frontiers of India has put an end to this branch of postal enterprise. Mail tonga lines worked by contractors still flourish on routes where there are no railways, but they are being gradually supplanted by motor conveyances.
A scheme under which the Post Office should maintain a large number of motor mail vans, which could be used in time of war for military transport, has already been suggested, and it is one well worth consideration. An arrangement of this kind should go far towards solving the problem of maintaining transport in times of peace, and should prove advantageous and economical to both the Army and the Post Office.
The success of the Indian Field Post Office in the numerous wars and expeditions in which it has been employed can be vouched for by the reports of commanding officers. Experience has been bought by long practice, and the Department never loses an opportunity of training its staff for military service. At the great military manœuvres which are frequently held during the cold weather in India the troops engaged are always accompanied by field post offices fully equipped for war conditions, with the result that there is always a large body of men in the Post Office thoroughly trained in this kind of work. On field service the postal official is "Nobody's child." He has to fend for himself, and, although transport is told off for the conveyance of camp equipment and mails, it is seldom forthcoming when required. The Army Head-quarters Staff looks after its own post office, but is inclined to regard the others as an encumbrance, and this attitude has developed a faculty of "slimness" in the field postal officer, which he uses for defeating military regulations. He has become an expert in stealing transport; a mule, a cart, a few coolies, a motor lorry, even an idle railway train, all serve his purpose as occasion rises, and his motto is "Get there, if not by fair means, then somehow," and get there he generally does. He has an uncanny instinct for finding out the secret destination of his brigade and is often on the ground, sorting the mail, before the troops arrive.
Mr. Charles Sheridan, a very well-known member of the Department, used to tell an amusing story of the horror of a senior staff officer meeting him one day on a frontier road pronounced absolutely unfit for wheeled traffic. Mr. Sheridan was driving along merrily with the mails in a two-horsed tonga; it was the shortest road and he took it, and the staff had to reconsider seriously their strategic plans, simply because the Superintendent of the Postal Service would not act according to military instructions.
The heart of the field postal system in any campaign is the Base Office. It is there that all information concerning the movements of regiments and units is carefully recorded. Lists of officers are kept in alphabetical order, and these lists are kept corrected from day to day on information received from the various field offices. The Base Office controls the main routes of mails to the divisional and brigade offices, it issues instructions and is ready to supply reliefs. It searches for missing men, disposes of undeliverable correspondence and has a hospital for repairing articles damaged in transit; in fact, the smooth running of the whole organization depends on the work done at the Base.
The arrangements for conveying the mails between the base office and the field offices devolves on the supervising officers, and endless difficulties have to be faced in order to obtain transport. A great deal depends on the personality of the postal officer in charge. If he is a pleasant fellow and popular with the transport staff he can get most things done, but, if he is insistent on his rights and has not learnt the meaning of "give and take" on a campaign, he will get nothing but excuses and regrets, the mail bags will be left behind in the last camp, irate Colonels will write to their personal friend the Director-General and the promising career of a conscientious public servant will be seriously injured.
In Appendix H is given a list of the most important expeditions in which field post offices have been employed, with a brief account of the arrangements made on each occasion. Most of these were small frontier wars and little difficulty was felt in providing the personnel. The Great War, however, was a very different matter. It necessitated the despatch of large numbers of post offices all over the world, and the demand on the resources of the Post Office of India was on such a vast scale that an account of it has been reserved for a separate chapter.