by Martin Treadwell

email: martin@cat22.co.nz

Last updated: 28 June 2006

Unless stated otherwise, all items are from my own collection. Contributions are very welcome!

In 1941, as the Japanese advanced down the Pacific, the New Hebrides emerged from a century of isolation and insignificance as a crucial strategic base for the allied forces, first with the halting of the Japanese advance in the Battle of the Coral Sea and then with Guadalcanal starting the process of driving the enemy back. As the fortunes of war changed, the military value of the New Hebrides changed too, from a possible battle front to a staging point for the battles in the Solomons and beyond, to a vital supply depot, hospital base and 'R & R' location for troops fighting further afield, in places such as Saipan. Whichever stage of the war, the twenty-odd thousand men who served in the New Hebrides were a long way from home. Most had never left their country before. They began to arrive in March 1942, blissfully ignorant of the future.

Communications with family and loved ones (mainly in the United States and New Zealand) were precious, but many servicemen were assigned to units which came and went like the tides, while others were subject to such complex military regulations and secrecy that to receive mail was often to defy the odds. Nevertheless, the servicemen who manned the army, navy and marine post offices somehow made it happen, often in basic working conditions. To their eternal credit, they kept the troops paid and in touch with their families.

To understand the military structure in the New Hebrides, it is important to realise that almost all troops were based either on the main island of Efate (either in the capital, Port Vila, or at Havannah Harbour on the north coast, or at Quoin Hill on the north west tip of the island) in the centre of the group, or on the much larger Espiritu Santo to the north. Here, I intend to refer to the latter simply as Santo, which is the local custom. There were isolated coastwatchers on other islands, but mail from them either does not exist or is not distinguishable and, for present purposes, we need consider only Efate and Santo.

Military censorship meant that servicemen could not state where they were in their return address on outgoing mail. The solution was to have all Pacific military mail pass through the office of the Fleet Post Master in San Francisco (military mail from Europe went to the Post Master in New York). In general terms, a serviceman's address might read, for example:

Private John Doe
182nd Infantry Battalion
APO 708
c/- Fleet Post Office
San Francisco

The Post Office in San Francisco would know to forward mail addressed to APO 708 to Santo, where the staff of APO 708 would then know (one hoped) where to find the 182nd Infantry Battalion.

In theory, this was brilliantly simple. In practice, the shifting sands of military policy and the irregular movement of troops made it a logistical challenge for the most dedicated of post office personnel. There were hundreds of APO's (Army Post offices), FPO's (Fleet Post Offices, also known as Navy offices - so FPO 140 and Navy 140 were the same thing) ) and MCPO's (Marine Corps Post Offices) thoughout the Pacific, some of which were static, while others existed in name only, operating through the physical premises of another post office. Still others existed but shifted around with the units to which they were attached. Ones that shifted around might even be split up temporarily if a unit was stretched across two locations. This happened to APO 27, for example, in mid 1943 as the 27th Infantry Battalion drifted back from Saipan in detachments. Part of APO 27 returned to Santo in August, while another part of it continued to operate in Saipan until all the troops were off the island some months later.

Efate and Santo each had military units to which had been assigned Army, Navy and Marine Post Offices. Some resulted in physical premises being established. As examples, Efate had APO 932 and Navy 156 with actual premises and Santo had APO 708, APO 27 and Navy 140. Others, too small to warrant an actual post office, made use of the premises of an existing post office - even one from a different branch of the forces. You will find mail from MCPO 725 with the circular date stamp ("cds") of Navy 140. Servicemen were required to give their return address at top left on the front of outgoing mail. This would alert the recipient to the proper address to which to reply. But it was also not uncommon for the sender to give his unit name only. If for some reason the APO, FPO or MCPO number was not given in the return address and also did not appear in the cds, as often happened, then any letter in reply would probably omit that vital information too and San Francisco had an herculean task trying to work out where, say, the 81st Photographic Air Reconnaissance Unit might be operating from this week. The records in San Francisco were likely to be out of date, because the tide of battle moved swiftly, and letters would sometimes follow servicemen for many months.

The following pages seek to illustrate the various post offices used in the New Hebrides between 1942 and 1945. For the sake of clarity, I have categorised them into "Efate" and "Santo" and then "Army, "Navy" and "Marine" in relation to each island. Obviously, this ignores chronological purity but the evolution of the postal services is more easily understood in this fashion. For some Post offices, no examples seem to survive (APO 1055, for example). For others, the actual service provided to the troops was carried out through the physical office of another Post Office. The marines were a case in point. There was no actual Post Office for the marines on Efate and all MCPO mail was in fact handled by other post offices, most by Navy 156 at Havannah Harbour.

Also illustrated here is a rare item of wreck mail - retrieved from a crashed flying boat which struck a reef in Segond Channel at Santo. Finally, the New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) Australian military postal services are dealt with. The New Zealanders had a strong presence on Santo and there were occasional Australian servicemen, who seem to have had to avail themselves of the US post offices. I also illustrate the censorship of civilian mail in the New Hebrides and explore the interrelationship between the military and civilian postal authorities.