First published 2018
In 1914, the Post Office employed a quarter million people worldwide. When Britain called for volunteers, thousands of postmen, filing clerks, and messenger boys answered. They formed two battalions of the Post Office Rifles and fought at the Somme and Passchendaele. Others joined the Royal Engineers Postal Section, delivering letters and parcels from home to soldiers in the trenches. Barrett draws on original letters, postcards, and diary entries to tell their story. Women and girls stepped into postal jobs back home while the men fought abroad. These unlikely heroes maintained the lifeline between front and home, ensuring precious correspondence reached its destination despite the chaos of war. The book reveals how ordinary postal workers became soldiers while never abandoning their mission to connect people across the battlefield.
Genres: history, 20th-century, non-fiction, military-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: ordinary-people-in-extraordinary-circumstances, untold-story
Setting: Britain, Somme, Passchendaele
Period: 1914
242 pages · Paperback · Independently published