U.S. NAVY POSTAL CLERK (PC) RATING BADGE

While mail has obviously been sent and received by U.S. Navy Sailors ever since they first set out to sea in the Revolutionary War, the Postal Clerk (PC) rating was not established until 1959. It was the result of a change in the way that the Department of Defense and the Post Office Department (as it was known at the time) handled the processing and delivery to mail, leading to the creation of the current Military Postal System serving as an extension of the United States Postal Service.

In 1959, this agreement was updated to call for the Post Office Department to physically handle and dispatch the mail – resulting in the Military Postal System (MPS) serving as an extension of the United States Postal Service (USPS). And where you have the USPS or a proxy of it, you are going to have USPS clerks—or, at least in the Navy, Sailors serving the Postal Clerk (PC) rating. That’s the reason the PC rating didn’t come into existence until 1959.

Depending on their rate, Postal Clerks could establish (or disestablish) a U.S. Navy post office, organize and supervise the staff, and process official mail. Just like a civilian postal clerk, they routed mail, processed claims and inquiries regarding items misplaced in transit, maintained directories of mailing addresses, kept private effects and important correspondence sent via mail stored in secure locations, and maintained reports and records on how the service was being run.

One of the Postal Clerk’s most important functions, at least in the days when cash was king aboard U.S. Navy ships, was the sale of stamps, postage, and money orders. As Sailors handed over their cash pay in return for these services, the Postal Clerk could hand over the proceeds to the Supply Officer, who could then allocate it to the Disbursing Clerk to use for cash payments on the bi-monthly paydays. This recycling of “folding money” was one way to reduce the amount of cash that would have to be drawn out of an official Navy checking account before ships embarked on months’-long deployments.

Related Items
Postal Clerk (PC) Ball Cap Device

RATE

Size

Fabric

Style

Price

$25.99

Quantity

USPHS

Merchant Marine

AUXILIARY

U.S. NAVY POSTAL CLERK (PC) RATING BADGE