How did a letter get from A to B?

From the collection points the mail continued on its journey to the main field post offices which had mostly been set up at central locations such as for example railway junctions. After that the post was distributed to the individual field post offices of the corps and divisions as well as to the base field post offices. From there it was collected by the detachments and troops seconded for this duty. Post from the front took the reverse route.

In order to ensure the rapid and smooth despatch of mail for the front strict guidelines were laid down in the Dienstbuch E-47 rulebook concerning the labelling and addressing of the items to be sent. The name and address of the sender had to be written in the top left-hand corner, and in the top right-hand corner the inscription Feldpost (or Tabori posta in Hungarian); the addressee and address were to be written in the central field and the field or base post office at bottom right. During the first days of the war these regulations were also published in various daily newspapers and illustrated with sample letters.

The notation Feldpost or Tabori Posta was especially important for private letters and postcards from the home front as it exempted the sender from paying postage. Letters up to a weight of 100 g were postage-free as was the so-called Feldpost-Korrespondenzkarte (field service postcard; in Hungarian Tabori postai levelezölap).

Right from the beginning of the war, the Austro-Hungarian military postal service was used on a huge scale both by those who remained at home as well as soldiers at the front, as attested by the volume of mail transported between the home and military fronts between 1914 and 1918. Estimates for the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy reckon that around nine million items of mail were conveyed daily during the four years of the war. The number of field service postcards issued officially came to 655,696,314 in the Austrian half of the Monarchy. In the Hungarian half the number came to 171,622,200, giving a total of 827,318,514. Of this total 63, 681,664 items belonged to the category of the specially pre-printed ‘I am healthy and doing well’ postcards that were issued from August 1916.

Translation: Sophie Kidd