The British Forces Post Office (BFPO) and the Loamshire Regiment
The BFPO sends post to the armed forces and MoD personnel, but they’ll never send it to the Loamshire Regiment, which is just a placeholder name for documentation.
I was booking a book signing on Eventbrite.com, and when I set my country as the UK, I got a dropdown for “state” – in practice, a list of counties in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As I was scrolling the list, an entry caught my eye: BFPO. I’ve never heard of that county!
That’s because it’s not a county – it’s the British Forces Post Office, a postal service which is separate to Royal Mail. Quoting from the GOV.UK page about it:
You can use the British Forces Post Office (BFPO) to send a letter or parcel to:
- serving armed forces personnel and their families
- an employee of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), or another official organisation, who’s entitled to use BFPO
Based on what I can find from Google, this exists at least in part for security reasons. If you send an international letter through Royal Mail, it will be given to another mail provider when it leaves the UK. If you send an international letter through BFPO, it will be delivered by BFPO – nobody outside the British government will see it.
If you want to send a letter through BFPO, you need to include a BFPO number, which looks roughly equivalent to a postcode. For example, if you were sending a letter to somebody serving on HMS Scott, you’d write “BFPO 381”. I suppose this is another reason why BFPO exists: it means you can send post to somebody, even if you don’t know their exact location in the world.
The Wikipedia article includes an example of a BFPO address, and another nugget of fun trivia:
Below is an example of a BFPO address, using the fictitious Loamshire Regiment:
12345678 LCPL B Jones B Company 1 Loamshire Regt BFPO 61
The page for Loamshire Regiment says that it’s “a placeholder name used by the British Army to provide examples for its procedures”. I couldn’t find an independent reference that says exactly that (just web pages regurgitating the Wikipedia article), but I did find an example of it in use in an official document.
The Rules of Procedure (Army) 1972 is a set of rules for the British Army, and in Schedule 2(3) it uses the Loamshire Regiment repeatedly in examples of how to write charge-sheets:
The accused No. 87654321 Private John Black, 1st Battalion, The Loamshire Regiment, a soldier of the regular forces is charged with […]
B. C. Green, Lieutenant-Colonel, Commanding 1st Battalion, The Loamshire Regiment […]
The accused No. 12345678 Corporal John Bull, a non-commissioned officer of the army reserve when called out on permament service, and No. 100000001 Private Thomas Atkins, a man of the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve when called out for permanent service, both of the 2nd Battalion, The Loamshire Regiment […]
Sergeant V. Green, The Loamshire Regiment […]
When on active service at Aldershot on 1st January 1970 said to No. 87654321 Sergeant V. Green, The Loamshire Regiment, when asked by him for his (the accused’s) particulars “Don’t be nosey”, or similar words. A. M. Brown, Lieutenant-Colonel, Commanding 2nd Battalion, The Loamshire Regiment
In that final example, I recognise 1st January 1970 as the Unix epoch, but that can’t be why it’s used here – I imagine it’s because it’s the start of the decade when this legislation was written.