Lest we forget
Remembrance Day, Sunday 11 November 2018, marks 100 years since the official end of the First World War.
Group CEO, Rico Back, attended a remembrance service organised jointly by Royal Mail and Post Office, on Wednesday 7 November in London, to commemorate the centenary and honour the more than 1,800 members of the Post Office Rifles who lost their lives in the war.
The service was held at St Botolph’s-without-Aldersgate church, which is known as the ‘Postman’s Church’ because it is located in Postman’s Park, so called because it borders the site of the former headquarters of the General Post Office (GPO).
Rico laid a wreath alongside defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, and CEO Post Office Ltd, Paula Vennells. The wreath read: ‘On behalf of all Royal Mail employees and those serving the Armed Forces. We will remember them’.
The Post Office Rifles
Royal Mail released 75,000 colleagues to fight in the war. As well as serving throughout the Armed Forces, the GPO also had its own regiment, The Post Office Rifles. A second battalion was formed in September 1914 to accommodate the growing number of volunteers.
The Post Office Rifles had existed in various forms from 1867. It was originally created to protect Royal Mail buildings from attack during war and was made up almost entirely of Royal Mail staff.
Sign up was so quick that a month after the First World War broke out a second battalion was created and a third was formed before the war was over.
The regiment, which was stationed on the Western Front, fighting at the Battles of The Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele, suffered terrible losses in combat – of the 12,000 soldiers, 1,800 were killed and 4,500 wounded. More than half of the regiment’s fighting force was lost at the Battle of Wurst Farm Ridge in September 1917.
During the war the Post Office Rifles won 145 awards for gallantry. Four former postal workers were awarded the Victoria Cross for valour ‘in the face of the enemy’. They were Sgt Alfred Knight, Sgt Albert Gill, Major Henry Kelly and Sgt John Hogan.
