The courier service
The courier service was created by Ministry of Interior on November 14, 1943. The aim of this service was the delivery of mail or documents between Military and Ministerial Institutions. The mail delivered by courier services was top-secret and needs to be escorted by Military cars or motorcycles, to avoid thefts by partizans. These escorts were formed by GNR soldiers. At the beginning, this service, had a daily frequency, then It was reduced due at adverse war events, until to be twice weekly on October 1944. The courier service, was organized in according with four main routes that linked some important cities of Northern Italy under Italian Social Republic Government. In some of that cities, secondary routes diparted from, to link other secondary cities. The secondary routes, were administrated by local Prefectures. The four maps at bottom, show these routes.
1° Route
The map above, shows the first route. The primary link ( with black inked rows ), is: Brescia - Bergamo - Milan - Novara - Vercelli - Turin and vice versa. The brown rows show secondary routes, administrated by local Prefectures. They are: Milan - Como ; Milan - Varese ; Milano - Pavia and Bergamo - Sondrio.
2° Route
The second route left from Vercelli and, passing in Alessandria, arrived in Genoa and vice versa. The secondary routes were: Alessandria - Asti ; Genoa - La Spezia ; Genoa - Savona ; Genoa - Imperia.
3° Route
The third route map is above showed. It is: Brescia - Verona - Vicenza - Padoa - Venice e vice versa. Secondary routes were: Padoa - Rovigo and Padoa - Treviso.
4° Route
Brescia - Mantua - Reggio Emilia - Modena - Bologna and vice versa, was the last route organized by Interior Ministry to deliver this kind of top-secret mail. Secondary routes were: Bologna - Ferrara and Cremona - Brescia.
Due at extremely rarity of official mail delivered with courier services, I have only a cover to show. All covers sent by courier services were free - franching and hit with special cancels who said: " per corriere " or "a mezzo corriere" or " per staffetta " (by courier service ). Some covers had these inscriptions wrote by typing-machines.
