Base Army Post Office - post runner

[WideEyedGirl]

Hello all,

My grandfather, Arthur Geoffrey Ashforth, was a Private in the York and Lancaster Regiment (1st and 6th battalion apparently).
My family know very little about his time in World War II, apart from that he served in Algiers (Algeria, Northern Africa) and Naples (Italy).

My father has mentioned that my Grandad Arthur was a post runner, and I have found documents that suggest he was in the Base Army Post Office. I can find little information about '15 BAPO' and even less about post runners in World War II.

So I was wondering if anyone here has any knowledge about BAPO and/or post runners in World War II, and/or any places I can look for information. I will attach two documents that mention the Base Army Post Office, just in case they contain information that I have missed (at the moment they are too large to post).

Many thanks for any help you can offer,
Holly

[Andy J2022]

Quite of lot of detail about how the postal system worked here.

My guess would be that your granddad actually worked as the post orderly for his regiment and this would involve him making daily, or at least frequent, trips to the BAPO to collect the mail for his unit. Once he returned to his unit he then sorted the mail for the companies within the battalion which the company clerks then collected and further distributed to the individual soldiers. Alternatively he may have been semi-permanently detached to work at the BAPO alongside the Royal Engineers Postal and Courier Service soldiers to help out with the manual sorting of the mail for all the units in the theatre of operations and this might also have required him to travel out to some of those units to deliver the mail.  A quick and efficient mail system was very important for morale.

The documents above would have allowed him to move freely in and out of the Port of Naples which was probably under the control of a joint US/British military police force, possibly with some Italian police also since Italy had surrendered by that point. He would have been with the 6th Battalion at this stage as the 1st Battalion was in Germany from the Spring of 1945.

[Davy MacLean]

I'm an ex army postie, Normally every unit would have whats called a UPO (Unit Post Orderly) Or He's tasked with moving mail about the country as a delivery courier to keep an eye on the mail and make sure it doesnt get robbed etc, The docs might be as said to allow free movement between allied zones with minimum of fuss,

We carried similar docs in Germany called NATO travel orders which allowed unhindered movement over borders and dics in German telling the police they couldn't search the vehicle if pulled and if they wanted to search it it had to be done on a British military camp under supervision from one of our officers.