Neither rain, nor sleet, nor grumpy Airmen...

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Austin M. May
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Every day around lunchtime, I eagerly run over to the base post office, peek through the tiny window of my mailbox, dial in my combination and pull out a handful of envelopes.

Someone should really tell the bill collectors that it's illegal to conduct a business through my APO box.

Despite being the ones who ensure I get those little white envelopes with the windows on the front demanding I pay for some service or another, the postal workers at RAF Mildenhall provide an invaluable service. What would we do without them?

For starters, we'd pay a lot more for our mail. And it'd probably take a lot longer to get here. As it is, for mail to get over here and into our eager hands (except for the aforementioned bills,) it has to first go from the sender to what the postal folks here call a "gateway." There are several of those in the United States, including New York, Miami, Dallas and San Francisco.

Once there, your package usually gets on a plane and heads to London. Depending on how it's shipped or how big it is, it might wind up on a boat, but most come by plane. After landing in London, your mail goes to the air mail terminal at RAF Alconbury, according to RAF Mildenhall's Postmaster, Tech. Sgt. Michael Sinibaldi. After that, it's RAF Mildenhall-bound.

Sergeant Sinibaldi said folks can usually expect to get their Priority Mail-shipped packages in about seven days. But don't start worrying if a week after your grandma said she sent you those cookies you still haven't seen them. Mail can, although it rarely does, take up to 45 days to reach its destination. After that period of time, feel free to file a claim with the post office.

That takes care of the mail coming in, but what about the packages we send out? The ones filled with little die-cast double-decker buses and "Greetings from England" postcards? They pretty much go the same way. But before you even consider walking into the post office with a parcel of presents, consider a few things.

First, you can't use your APO (which stands for Army or Air Force Post Office, for those who may be curious) for a business. See, I was serious about the bill thing, although they're in the right to send those things to me. What's not in the right is folks who may be running a mail-order business from their home and use their APO to send or receive shipments related to that.

That's not to say you can't order something from someone and have it shipped to your APO. And limited "business-type" transactions are ok. If you sell that old Jurassic Park VHS tape on a popular online auction site and want to ship it out, that's fine. If you sell, say, fine cutlery and stoneware or candles for some larger company and want to use your APO to send them out, stop. You can't. It's the law.

Even your personal mail is subject to certain restrictions, but they're the same ones everyone else has to abide by, too. They're pretty easy - don't send fireworks, alcohol, drugs - you get the idea. The list of what you can't ship is long, so make sure to check it out at the post office before sending anything questionable.

All this info is courtesy of Senior Master Sgt. Larry Buchanan, postal superintendent, not just made up by yours truly. Anyhow, try to skirt the system and get caught and you'll be in some hot water. You could lose your APO privileges altogether. That, and you'll cause undue headaches for our fine postal employees. And believe me, they work hard enough already.

During a slow week, they're dealing with more than 1,000 packages for customers. And that's just packages that don't fit in the boxes; it doesn't include the thousands of pieces of regular mail. There are 31 people assigned to the post office here, 26 of whom are uniform-wearing servicemembers. Since the job is mainly staffed by special-duty assignment volunteers, you might say "thanks" to the clerk handing you your package next time, because it's a safe bet he or she volunteered for the job.

Sergeant Sinibaldi said he really enjoys seeing the look on the faces of the people finally getting that package they've been waiting on. And the best part? You can experience that as well.

The post office is one of the few military agencies where people can volunteer to lend a hand, and that hand is always appreciated by the folks who staff the place permanently. If you're interested in volunteering at the post office, give Sergeant Sinibaldi a call at 298-5158. The holidays are their busiest season, so if you can only afford to dedicate a small bit of your time, that would be the best time to do it.

While you're there, if you see any bills with my name on 'em, feel free to accidently put them in the mailbox of someone with a little higher rank.

I'm joking folks. That's against the law, too.