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THE tragic tale of a mother deprived of her soldier son's final letter home before he was killed because it was destroyed by the censor has been revealed as the Royal Mail releases commemorative First World War stamps.
The Speeds' story was unearthed as Royal Mail researched images for their commemorative stamps
Lance Corporal Sydney Speed was fighting on the Western Front with the 18th Battalion London Regiment when he was killed in action on October 28 1915.
But his mother was robbed of the chance to read his final words home as the letter he sent the day before his death was destroyed by censors because it was sent in the wrong-coloured envelope.
His heartbroken mother Sarah, who lost her husband Walter just five months before, told of her anger at “being deprived of my son's last words” because of “heartless red-tapeism”.
In a letter published in the Daily Express, she told how she waited for weeks “with unspeakable anxiety” for a letter from her son, who was in the trenches, when the green envelope finally arrived.
She wrote: “Picture my dismay when on opening it I found not the long-delayed letter from my son but the now familiar typed notice, 'Letter destroyed; this pattern of envelope is obsolete and its use is forbidden' and the return of a family letter I had sent for him to read.
“Six days later I am notified by the Territorial Force Record Office, under date of November 9, that my son had died in the field on October 28 from wounds received in action.
“By this heartless piece of red-tapeism I have been deprived of my son's last words to his mother.
“Well may you say 'Imagine the poignant suffering,' which in my case is intensified by the fact that I have only five months been a widow.“
The destruction of letters by the censor purely because they were sent in green envelopes, which had become obsolete, had sparked criticism in the press.
The outcry over what happened to Mrs Speed and others like her was taken up by Herbert Nield, MP for Ealing in west London, who raised it in Parliament.
The Speeds' story was discovered by the Royal Mail as they researched what images to put on their 2015 First World War commemorative stamps, which go on sale today.
One of the stamps features the image of a football which was kicked by British troops in the Battle of Loos on the Western Front in 1915, which L/Cpl Speed fought in shortly before his death.
Philip Parker, head of stamp strategy at Royal Mail, said: “The Battle of Loos was a major battle and there was this legendary football that soldiers smuggled in and played with.
“When all the soldiers were going over the top they kicked it over towards the German front, it was meant to be a morale booster, to keep them going.
“As they were hammered with machine gun fire and gas, this football survived.“
Mr Parker said there are so many tragedies and stories from the Great War it is hard to tease out just a few.
The set of stamps also includes a British soldier at Cape Helles in Gallipoli.
A third features Rifleman Kulbir Thapa, the first Nepalese Gurkha to win the Victoria Cross.
He served with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Queen Alexandra’s Own Gurkha Rifles and survived the war.
Joanna Lumley, who has campaigned for the Gurkhas, said: “I am glad a Gurkha is being honoured.”