Location: Egypt, Time: 1941... World War II
British forces and colonies are extremely tense. Nazi forces are sweeping across Europe and perhaps the United Kingdom soon. The Egyptians are offering aid, but on conditions, the most important of which is that Britain buys the entire cotton crop, and the imperial treasury is almost empty. The morale of the soldiers is at its worst. The Germans and Italians are sinking ships loaded with mail in the Mediterranean almost every day, and if the letters were sent by sea via the Cape of Good Hope, away from the Axis forces, it would take six months for the letters to arrive! Moreover, airmail cannot accommodate this enormous quantity of letters. .
Mail during wartime – for those who don't know – may be more important than equipment and supplies, as it is the only way to check on family. Not corresponding regularly is terrifying and raises fears. Due to military movements, it was necessary to have Canadian and American units in Britain, and British soldiers expected the worst for their wives and girlfriends, especially from the damned Canadians stationed in their country, who had a bad reputation.
The situation had become extremely serious for the military command, and the problem of lost mail was terrifying. For example, the New Zealand forces in Egypt attempted to send 150,000 letters in a single month, and not one arrived! The issue escalated to the point of being discussed in Parliament. A solution had to be found immediately and at any cost. The solution was the Airgraph. The idea was simple: soldiers would write their letters and send them to the post office, where they would be opened by a censor, photographed on microfilm, and then sent by plane to be developed. Each letter would then be printed individually and delivered to the recipient. The idea was a resounding success. 1,600 ordinary letters, instead of weighing 23 kilograms, could now fill a single microfilm weighing only 1.5 kilograms, and each letter took three weeks to produce!
The first airgrave mail was sent from London to Cairo, carrying 70,000 letters. Several months later, the Egyptian military mail service received airgrave recording devices from Kodak Eastman, enabling soldiers to send letters to their families. Montgomery, the commander of the British forces at the Battle of El Alamein, considered this invention one of the important reasons for the Allies' success in defeating Hitler. During the war, and after its overwhelming success in Egypt, the idea was adopted in several countries, such as India and Algeria. However, after the war, it lost popularity due to the lack of privacy in the letters, and it faded away after a few years. Attached is a picture of a letter with the first airgrave stamp from my personal collection, and a video from 1941 explaining the entire process.
Moheb Rizkalla
