Hello everybody, I was going over a war diary related to signals in North Africa and I found a traffic report which mentions the acronyms ELS and ALS (photos attached). I went over some British military acronyms I have but I did not find anything definite. It seems like it is related to some type of dispatch service but such service is under the acronym DRLS. The LS in the latter term stands for "Letter Service," so I am suspecting that the same may be true for ELS and ALS (perhaps related to express or airmail?). Does anybody have knowledge of what these acronyms mean? Thank you
My collections of letters include Air Letters (Airmail Forms) and Electronic Mail Forms (predominantly 1943 BNAF (British North Africa Force). The Air Letter was similar to current Airmail Forms but the Electronic was a smaller form hand written which was photographed reduced to a microfiche type size and transmitted. They were often very difficult to read but saved precious space on Mail Ships during the difficult Convoy runs at that time. I have none for 1944 so it seems they were in use for a short time. I have samples but they will take time to prep for uploading here. It would take considerable time to read through 200 plus letters to find a reference to what they were officially listed as. Hope that this helps. Air Letter is clear but the other does not give a title name on it. I have perhaps a dozen electronic letters from two officers in North Africa but all the ones they sent from Italy were Air.
Thank you for the reply. I have found in another list "Amphibious Landing Ship". The problem is that such definitions do not match the context that is presented in the war diary (from the Chief Signal Officer of the 8th Army in North Africa). There, it shows that both ELS and ALS carry some type of signal traffic. The presence of these terms together with Line and W/T traffic and the presence of terms like "registered " "and non-registered" (see photos) indicates that this is possibly related to messages carried by mail. I cannot see such function performed by the Army Legal Service. At some point I thought that perhaps ALS is actually an abbreviation for Air Liaison Section. (the actual abbreviation is ALSec), but again this does not seem to make much sense because the air liaison section was about air support and was not a messenger service. Now, I do know that certain messages were carried by airplanes, so perhaps the "A" is related to "Air" but I have not found anything solid.
Thank you for the reply. Was this service used for posting (by air) official documents like orders and directives or was it just for regular mail serving the troops (or both)? By the way, my diary is from 25th and 26th June 1942 when the 8th army was retreating towards Alamein.
My collections are from members of an Artillery Regiment so were personal correspondence with families not official signals or documents.
This is what I was thinking. I have not found such air delivery service for official documents for 1942. I know that there must have been some form of air delivery which makes a lot of sense for the period of my war diary when the 8th army HQ and its signal elements were in full retreat. I know that there was an ADLS in 1944 (air dispatch letter service) the mail goes through Aeroplane504.pdf ADLS stood for Air Despatch Letter Service. No 1697 Flight’s operations record book sums up its function: “...the delivery of important documents, mail, instructions, etc for the Allied Expeditionary Air Force”
From http://www.egyptstudycircle.org.uk/Members/Military/WWII/Brits/SC_Dec5_261_952.pdf Express Letter Service or “E.L.S.” was organised and run by the Royal Corps of Signals and previously was designated “D.R.L.S.”(i.e. Despatch Rider Letter Service). It is a service for official documents only, catering for anything not sufficiently urgent for telegraphy but necessitating a quicker means of conveyance than Army Postal Service. Looking at Google and the previous posts ALS would be Air Letter Service. Richard
Airgraph absolutely correct Uncle Jack. I found the description in the text of one of the Air letters but your explanation is far more detailed. Thank you. BNAF 30th June 1943 Dear D. I’ve written you an airgraph today....
