The radio in my car is fairly permanently tuned in to Radio 2 - Chris Evans on the way to work and Simon Mayo on the way home. Sometimes when I am in the car around lunchtime, I am tempted to turn over to something else, as I'm not mad on the Jeremy Vine show, but during my travelling from Guildford to Brighton today, the segment of his show devoted to letters from the front line during World War One was quite something.
As I have mentioned, I am reading a book about letters at the moment, but haven't reached the 20th Century just yet, so it will be interesting to see how much time is spent on WW1 correspondence when I get to it.
A lot of the background to the radio show piece can be found in the BBC website's magazine article here.
There were a few things that just amazed me about the story. Firstly there was the amazing organisation and efficiency, dealing with billions of letters throughout the war period, and being able to get correspondence back and forth from everywhere in the world that soldiers were serving. Then there was the censorship - a massive exercise undertaken to ensure that no sensitive military information got out, but also the censoring of anything that might cause morale to fall. And finally, and most movingly of all was the volume of unopened mail that was returned to the sorting offices because the intended recipient had been killed in action. 30,000 letters every day. The postal service even ensured that the unopened letters were not returned to the senders until the official telegram with the dreadful news had been delivered.
Here's an extract from one of the letters, transcribed using the online "listen again" service:
Private Vic Jones of the Cheshire Regiment to his wife, 21 November 1917:
"Don't worry yourself about me darling, I'm quite alright, but I'm terribly homesick. I'm not staying in Blighty if I get out of this alright. I never want anything more to do with the so-called civilised Christian people. They're not fit to associate with the boys who've so willingly risked their lives in defence of something which they never possessed, only in name. Often since I've been out here if I've heard a fellow say "It isn't worth it", I've thought very seriously over those few words, and have come to the conclusion that it isn't worth it. Heaven, if there is such a place, is not worth the sacrifice of life which has been made this last three and a half years, much less Blighty. Wouldn't it be fine if it would finish before Christmas. My one cherished ambition is to see you and Cliff again, and I hope that ambition will soon be realised."