The recent mail delay, which had parents, wives and sweethearts sending frantic telegrams to I-B G.I.'s,
"Why haven't I received any letters?" will be broken with the delivery of about 10 tons of I-B mail (roughly 700,000
letters) to Stateside addresses between the second and the fifth of February, according to spokesmen in the Theater
Post Office.
The spokesman said the delay occurred when storms over both Atlantic routes kept all planes grounded for ten days in early January, thus piling up 10 tons of mail in Casablanca by January 22. Drastically reduced ATC tonnages for the trans-Atlantic haul made it impossible to break the backlog until January 29, when officials of the North African Division, ATC, made available for the delivery of I-B mail to the States. C-54's, being flown back to the U.S. as surplus planes. |
Tonnage allotments to the U.S. from I-B Theater via ATC have declined approximately 84 percent from last
November to February, 1946, spokesmen for G-3 told the Roundup. They said the drastic reduction was caused both
by reduction in the needs of the shrinking I-B Theater, and the reduction in ATC personnel and facilities.
The Theater Post Office stated that mail to India had probably also been backlogged in the U.S. as a result of the storms, but they had no way of knowing the details. There has been no abnormal delay in transporting India-bound mail from Casablanca to here, they declared. Mail service between I-B and the U.S. will probably not be as rapid as it has been before even without unusual weather, they declared, citing the fact that whereas planes used to arrive at Karachi |
from Casablanca almost hourly, reduced tonnage allotments have brought scheduled flights down to about one a day.
Mail which left India in late December was held up at Casablanca by storms. Most of this mail was cleared out of Casablanca about January 9, when the Liberty Ship USS Keith Vawter hauled two tons of homeward bound first class mail to America as an emergency measure. Theater Postal officials estimated that this mail should have arrived at U.S. ports during the last week in January. The spokesman said that the delay in delivery of mail to the U.S. was far worse than the delay in delivery of mail to India because the number of letters going home exceeds the number of letters coming into India by several million each month. |
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THEY'RE STILL IN THE SWIM |
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Highlights of U.S. Army activities at Bombay: (Top) Heroes of the disastrous 1944 explosion and fire are presented with Bronze Star Medals. (Lower) GIs and their dates enjoy one of the many dancing parties held at the Deepak Mahal, ATC rest camp hotel, for men on furlough in the city. |
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