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 manoeuvres 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.