"The magnitude of the task set the Military Postal Service may be appreciated when it is realised that the Army Mails from England have exceeded in bulk the whole of the mails arriving for the inhabitants of Cape Colony and Natal, and contained each week little short of 750,000 letters, newspapers, and parcels for the troops. No little credit is therefore due to the department under Major Treble in the first few months, and for the greater part of the time under Lieut.-Colonel J. Greer, Director of Military Postal Services, for the way in which it has endeavoured to cope with the vast quantity of correspondence, bearing in mind the incessant manner in which the troops have been moved about the country, the transport difficulties which had to be encountered, the want of postal experience in the bulk of the personnel of the corps, and the inadequacy of the establishments laid down for the several organisations." His Majesty has been pleased to confer the honour of C.M.G. on Messrs. Greer and Treble in acknowledgment of their services. The forty-eighth report (1902) mentions no change of any importance in the Army Postal Service in South Africa, and gives the weekly average mail from England as 184,000 letters and 143,600 packets of printed matter: the total number of letters for the year ended March 31, 1902, was 10,774,000 outward, and 8,372,000 homeward, showing a decrease compared with previous returns. During the same period 528,000 parcels were sent out. The last official reference to the Army Postal Service in South Africa is contained in the forty-ninth (1903) report, announcing its withdrawal, postal communications with the troops still on service in the old colonies and the new ones being carried on through the Colonial Post Offices under the ordinary regulations. The Peace was declared May 31, 1902. The war in South Africa left its impress on many pages of the stamp collector's album, but at this juncture we are chiefly concerned with the immediate work of the British military postal service. Collectors have followed the use of the stamps of the home country into the distant fields of operations by means of the various postmarks which are summarised as follows from the collection of Captain Guy R. Crouch, of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry[3]: [Footnote 3: _The Postage Stamp_, vol. XIV., pp. 234-237.] [Illustration: 24 25 26 27] Type 1 (_Fig._ 24). Office Numbers from 1 to 56, and 100. Used also at Cape Town base with initials BO (Base Office) and an asterisk (sometimes omitted) in lieu of the office number. Also at sub-base offices with larger office numerals 1 to 9.