When the war began in 1939, thousands of experienced male postal workers left their jobs to join the armed forces. To keep the communication network running, the General Post Office recruited a massive new workforce of women and teenagers. Women stepped into roles that were previously restricted to men. They drove delivery vans, sorted heavy mailbags, and maintained telephone switchboards during air raids. Young boys, often under the age of 16, worked as telegram messengers. These “Boy Messengers” rode bicycles through blacked-out streets and active bombing zones to deliver urgent news to families and government officials.
The Mobile Post Office
German bombers frequently targeted GPO buildings to disrupt British communications. The Mount Pleasant sorting office in London, the largest of its kind in the world, suffered significant damage from direct hits. When a local post office branch was destroyed by high explosives, the service did not stop. The GPO immediately deployed mobile post offices to the affected neighborhoods. These were converted buses or large vans parked on rubble-strewn street corners. Residents queued outside these vehicles to buy stamps, send parcels, and collect their pensions, ensuring that daily life continued even after a raid.
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The Airgraph System
Sending physical letters to troops fighting in North Africa and Asia took up valuable cargo space on ships and aircraft. To solve this logistics problem, the Post Office introduced the Airgraph service in 1941. The sender wrote a message on a specific form, which the post office then photographed onto microfilm. A single sack of these microfilm reels held the equivalent of 4,500 pounds of regular mail. The reels were flown to the destination, where the images were developed and printed onto small photographic paper. This innovation allowed millions of letters to reach the front lines without displacing essential supplies like ammunition and food.
Censorship and Security
Every piece of mail leaving the country went through a strict inspection process. The government established censorship stations where examiners opened and read letters to prevent sensitive military information from leaking to the enemy. Censors looked for details about troop movements, ship locations, or even weather reports. If they found forbidden information, they blacked it out with heavy ink or cut the sentences out of the paper with scissors. The Post Office also ran public campaigns reminding citizens that “Careless Talk Costs Lives,” urging them to be discreet in their written correspondence.
Handling the Volume
Despite the chaos of war, the volume of mail increased dramatically. Families separated by evacuation or military service relied entirely on letters to stay connected. At the peak of the conflict, the Post Office handled over 12 million letters and packets every week for the armed forces alone. The incredible volume required the GPO to run special railway trains dedicated solely to military mail. These trains moved secretly across the country to port cities, where the bags were loaded onto convoy ships bound for overseas battlefields.
