Letters Home was commissioned by English Heritage in 2014, as part of their commemorations of the
100th anniversary of the start of The Great War. It tells a story of “ordinary people in
extraordinary times”, the work of the Post Office in ensuring that people separated by the war
were still able to communicate and share their experiences by letter.
We were inspired by the way that something so simple could be of such enormous importance,
how it touched every family, and provided a lasting testimony to those who lived, and died.
(FX: typewriter, morse code, radio static...)
Imagine a world where the letter is king There’s no Facebook,
no Twitter, no WhatsApp, no Bing... No laptops, no tablets, no mobile phones,
no telephone boxes, no dialling tones.
No answering machines, no faxes, no pagers. A home phone is for those
born to wealth or high wages... Now you may think this
world sounds like utter bliss! Go back one hundred years and that’s how it is.
If you want to share news with a friend out of sight then you walk, meet and talk.
Or you stop, sit and write! If you want to share news with a distant relation,
a letter’s the best means of communication!
That means you need paper, a pen and some ink. You need to make time to record what you think.
And once you have written what you want to say – Buy a stamp, find a post box, and it’s on its way.
And if you think this sounds like a terrible chore.
Now imagine you’re doing this and fighting a war! In a trench, in the dirt
and the smoke and the stink. You want to write home to say
you’re in the pink. With shells whistling round, you might write to your folks.
To send you some comforts; a cake or some smokes. Some hand knitted mittens or socks would be nice.
Or that powder you put in your clothes to kill lice!
Because when you’re in danger and far from your home,
a letter reminds you, you’re not on your own.
On land or at sea, in khaki or blue, a letter says someone is thinking of you.
And it's more than just words scratched on paper with pen.
You can read it for comfort again and again. When your rations are gone and you’re
shivering with cold. For the man in the front line, a letter’s like gold.
Because knowing that everything at home is alright,
is good for morale and keeps men in this fight. A letter from home when conditions are chronic,
lifts the spirits of men in sore need of a tonic. So, imagine this world of carnage and mud.
Where a few yards of land gained is paid for in blood.
And you haven’t the first idea when it will end. And the next whizz-bang might land on you
or your friend. Where a simple thing, somehow, can make you feel better. Like
receiving a parcel, or opening a letter.
Letters from home were recognised as a vital part of keeping up the morale of the men at the front.
Along with rations and ammunition, letters and parcels had to get through!
The Army had its own postal service - the Royal Engineers Postal Section, or REPS for short.
Here's how it works! From Tommy in the
trench..... To sweetheart at home! So Tommy writes his letter or postcard.
He's going to use a pencil: easier to use in a trench than pen and ink. He writes...
"On Active Service” on it and it doesn’t need a stamp. The letters are collected at Field Post Offices,
in barns, tents or dugouts. FPOs offer the same services as a normal Post Office.
You can find a Field Post Office easily enough, they have a white and red flag.
The letters are postmarked, put into sacks, and taken by lorry to the large Army Post Offices,
usually at each Divisional railhead, where they are loaded onto trains.
Trains then transport them to Boulogne, Calais or Le Havre, where
they are loaded onto steamships. Then it's the short journey across the channel!
And into the care of the Post Office. The letters are then taken by rail or road
to London. Where they are sorted again and sent on to the families waiting for news.
Sometimes the letters offer a real insight into the war.
From an officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
“It’s a war with no glamour or glory such as one expects in a world wide show like this.
Modern weapons are too deadly and the whole art of war,
and all tactics as laid down in our books have been quite altered.
No advancing across the open by short rushes. Now it’s all digging new lines of trenches by night.”
Sometimes they are slightly briefer. From a private of the Royal Fusiliers.
“I hope this letter finds you as it leaves me. I’ve got a bit of shrapnel in my bottom”
Some are even more to the point! From a gunner of the Royal Artillery.
“You can send me another tin of Boracic ointment. It’s very useful!” Some
are just downright strange! From Dick to Molly.
“A Happy Christmas. I am sending this to my aunt to forward to you as I do not know the address.
Please tell me your name as I have forgotten it.” But they ALL get through!
From an Officer, somewhere in France. “30th December 1914. I got 3 letters,
posted in Ireland on the 26th, and in England on the 28th this afternoon. So letters are
reaching us as quickly as if there were no war! It’s really rather wonderful!”
It’s amazing to imagine that a system that relied on handwritten instructions, typed orders,
and manpower could be so incredibly efficient!
And as the war went on the post office came to rely less on manpower and more on woman power.
Men to the trenches! Women to the benches! Jobs that had previously been thought of as
a male only preserve had to be done by whoever was available
and that meant Woman porters, sorters, drivers.
Women were even delivering the post! Christmas, 1914, Princess Mary began a
fund to provide a brass tin of sweets, tobacco, pencils, writing paper, and pictures of the royal
family to every member of the armed services. That’s soldiers AND sailors.
The idea caught on, the public raised money,
the tins were manufactured and sent out! It was a triumph for morale boosting!
But it was a nightmare for logistics!
The post office and REPS were just about able to cope, although not everyone got their gift on
Christmas day. Happy New Year! Letters home that Christmas of 1914 talked about strange events at the front.
From a private of the Queen's Westminster Rifles “Friday 25th. Christmas Day. Freezing and a bit
misty. We started walking about behind the trench and after a bit we got out the front
and then we saw Germans doing the same, we waived and they did until at last we got so close
that five of us went over to meet five of them and started exchanging keepsakes, buttons and the like.
It seemed the weirdest thing in the world that we were talking to the men
that we were trying to shoot the day before."
Families were getting news of the war that wasn't in the newspaper. The Christmas Truce of 1914
was a moment of respite that would not be repeated. The High Command didn't approve.
Luckily the army had a way of piching the flow of information. Censorship!
Every letter from a private soldier had to be read by their officer, who could put
a “blue pencil” and scratch out anything he thought was unsuitable.
It made many officers feel uncomfortable. From an officer of the Royal Field Artillery:
“It is always with mixed feelings that I personally view the arrival of fresh paper,
because the soldiers write such awful things in their letters,
mostly rot, or else a repetition of a few remarks which they could quite easily put on a postcard,
and I have to read them all through! But it certainly makes them happy
and that is the great thing” For young officers, public school educated,
with little experience of the working class man, their men's letters offered a window into Tommy's world.
“They have big hearts, these soldiers, and it is a very pathetic task to have to read
all their letters home. Some of the older men, with wife’s and families, who write every day,
have in their style a wonderful simplicity which is almost great literature. There
is much to be learned from a soldier's letter.” “I have just censored the letters of my men.
By Jove! If you could read some of these letters, they would do you good.
The tenderness of these great, rough fellows is wonderful. I love them all.”
Wherever the British Army sent its soldiers, the men of the Royal Engineers Postal Section were never far behind.
To Gallipoli. Salonika and Mesopotamia. West Africa and Italy.
The Balkans and Russia. The officers wanted
to keep their men occupied. A busy soldier, so the thinking went, didn't have time
to ponder the situation he was in. And letter writing provided a partial
solution. Give the men something to occupy themselves. Remind them of what they are fighting
for. Behind the lines in France and back in Blighty
a whole industry sprang up producing postcards of all types to be sent to and from the frontlines!
There was the patriotic! God save the King! The anti Kaiser! Down with Little Willy!
Flags of the Allies! Ships of the Navy!
You could go to a photographer's studio and have your picture taken. Have it copied as a postcard,
and send that home.
Vesta Tilley, the Music Hall star,
sold postcards of herself dressed as an officer, to raise money for soldier’s funds.
But more often than not it was humorous postcards,
poking fun at “Tommy in the Trench” and gently mocking the changing
world on the home front that made their way backwards and forwards across the channel.
“Well if you knows of a better ‘ole, go to it!” In 1916, 16,000 sacks of mail were being
transported daily. 16,000 sacks to be sorted, sent and delivered! And nearly all of it came through London.
The existing sorting offices at Mount Pleasant just wasn't big enough to cope.
So the Post Office built “Home Depot”, in Regents Park. A
huge wooden shed. More sheds were added to keep pace with the growing number of military fronts
and the growing number of men being sent out. It was massive! A vast complex of sorting rooms,
storerooms and offices covering five acres. That’s the same as three football pitches.
Hundreds of women cross referencing, checking lists and card indexes,
working in shifts to keep the post moving. By the end of the war, Home Depot was the largest
man-made wooden construction in the world. And the letters home kept coming in...
“My Darling Mother and Father, I am writing on the eve of my first action.
Tomorrow we go to the attack in the greatest battle the British Army has ever fought. I
cannot quite express my feelings on this night and cannot tell if it's God's will that I shall
come through - but if I fall in battle then I have no regrets save for my loved ones I leave behind.
If I do fall do not let things be black for you.
Be cheerful and you will be living life always to my memory.”
”We are just off to the front and may be in action in a few hours time.
In case of my misfortune to go under... to my boy, I wish him to be a good, brave and real English
laddie. Do not worry or fret as that is no use, but be as cheerful as possible to help others.”
"My Dear Boy Fred, this is a letter you will never see
unless your Daddy falls in the field. It is his farewell words to you in case anything happens."
"Dearest Win, I am writing just a line in case of accidents.
Just to let you know I have always loved you dear. You are the best little girl on God’s earth have I
told you before. But I am writing this because I have a feeling I shall not come back again.
My last wish is that you marry a good man and be happy and to think of your Humble now and then.
“A parcel came in our trenches with our rations, addressed to a bomber, a personal friend of mine
who had been killed the previous day. It is the practise for such parcels to be split up among the
addressee’s friends. This parcel contained many little things which we find useful in the trenches
and among them a pair of gloves. These were given to a fellow who lost his, but half an hour later
he called us together again and said “I say, you chaps, listen to this. I can’t use these gloves.
He then read out not in a steady voice, a short message written on a slip of paper which he had
found tucked inside one of the gloves. It was just to say that they were sent to dear Harry with his
mother’s love and nobody save her had ever touched them. Just before packing them up she had put them
on, so Harry could imagine when he wore them that he was holding his mother's hand...”
By the time the “War to end all Wars” finally came to its end, the
Post Office had handled more than two billion letters. To and from soldiers, sailors, airmen, nurses,
prisoners of war, and families back home. They had dealt with 114 million parcels
But when “the boys came home” it was all forgotten. The
letters home got put away. Slowly pushed to the back of drawers. “Home Depot” closed,
fell into disuse and is now but a memory. People wanted to move on. They wanted to look to the future.
The past is the past after all. So imagine again, this world we have lost.
When victory was won at a terrible cost. As the words of these people reach down
through the years. To tell us their feelings, their hopes and their fears.
When we look at their letters and postcards because,
They were ordinary people, They were people like us.
(FX: Typewriter, morse code, radio static)