The Last Post charts the impact of the war on the PO

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Churchill's wartime farewell to wife unveiled

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008 ... etter-post

Death was on Winston Churchill's mind on July 17 1915, as he sat down to write four neat pages to his wife, Clementine. She never read his letter, unlike millions of distraught widows who opened their own envelopes similarly marked "in the event of my death".

"Do not grieve for me too much," he wrote. "Death is only an incident, and not the most important that happens to us in this state of being. On the whole, especially since I met you, my darling one, I have been happy and you have taught me how noble a woman's heart can be.

"If there is anything else I shall be on the look out for you. Meanwhile look forward, feel free, rejoice in life, cherish the children, guard my memory. God bless you, goodbye, W."

The letter, still among his papers when he died 40 years later, is on public display for the first time - in facsimile form, as the fragile original is preserved at the Churchill Archive in Cambridge - in a poignant exhibition at the Cabinet War Rooms museum in London.

Drawn mainly from Royal Mail archives, The Last Post charts the impact of the war on the Post Office, when 75,000 young postmen, sorting office staff and clerks volunteered to join up: 15,000 never came home. Letters were a life support system for the soldiers and the families they left: the 700,000 items posted in 1914 rose to 13m at the height of the war. The cost of the penny post went up by a ha'penny, the astonishing 10 deliveries a day in some parts of Britain were slashed, and neither ever returned to its prewar level.

When Churchill wrote what might have been his last letter, his first political career was already over, as he had rejoined the army after resigning as First Lord of the Admiralty over the disastrous campaign at Gallipoli.

Clemmie would have had to read on before coming to his tender last words: the first three of the letter's four pages are taken up with money and his own posthumous reputation: "I am anxious that you should get hold of all my papers ... some day I should like the truth to be known."

He tells her where to get hold of £3,000 in stocks and shares, and adds: "I believe there will be found sufficient to pay any debts or overdraft." She will have £300 a year, and £10,000 from an insurance policy, which she could use to buy an annuity until inheriting more on the death of his mother. "Of course it will be much better to keep the £10,000 and live on the interest than to spend it on the chance of my mother living a long time."

Churchill's complex financial arrangements contrast with other letter writers in the exhibition: Leonard Eldridge, who joined the Post Office Rifles, wrote to his mother that she would get "everything I possess except the Aspadistras plant (sic) of mine, the plant I with my last wish, leave to and must be given to Miss Florence Smith of 6 Aldebert Terrace, Lambeth". The "must be" was underlined. Eldridge died on the Somme in 1916.

• The Last Post is at the Cabinet War Rooms in London until February 28

[baldrick]

The memorial plaque in Mount Pleasant's Phoenix Centre lists 255 men from Mount Pleasant PO who lost their lives
in the First World War, and another 24 from the London Parcel Section which was part of Mount Pleasant.
That must have been around one in ten of the staff then.

[Big Daz]

We have a plaque up in our enquiry office.