Twelve and a half million letters were sent to the the Western Front every week. In 1914 the Postal Section of the Royal Engineers had a staff of 250 men. By 1918 the Army Postal Service employed 4,000 soldiers. Letters only took two or three days to arrive from Britain. Even soldiers in the front line trenches received daily deliveries of letters.
Soldiers were also encouraged to write letters to friends and family in Britain. Most men decided it would be better to conceal the horrors of the trench warfare. As a result of the Defence of the Realm Act that was passed in 1914, all letters that the men wrote should have been read and censored by junior officers.
The letters are archived and available from a wide variety of educational platforms to use in primary and secondary schools and academies and their power is undimmed and their insight into the personal and shared experience of war and why conflict resolution is so important has never been more relevant. 100 years later and our world is still ravaged by war and its consequences for all those innocents affected by atrocity.
Write a letter for peace to a world leader and follow in the footsteps of the great pacifists who have shaped our world and made it a safer and more peaceful place.