I don’t have a Remembrance Day routine. Last year I went to the SOE memorial to Violette Szabo on the Thames (Alms for Oblivion). This year I went to Hammersmith post office to collect a parcel.
Then I went on to my club for a short ceremony in the hall to pay our respects to Members and Staff who had died in World War I – two of whom I might add, name-droppingly, are the sons of Prime Ministers: Primrose and Asquith. However, the visit to the post office was more significant. There is a memorial there to post office staff who died in WW I. Many of them served in the PO Rifles. If you are unfamiliar with this gallant band, founded in 1860, let good old Wikipedia tell you of their part in the Great War.
The Post Office Rifles served with distinction in the Great War. They arrived in France on 18 March 1915. By the end of the war, 1,800 men from the Post Office Rifles would be dead and 4,500 more would be wounded.
After the outbreak of the war, the existing units of the Territorial Force each formed duplicate (or “second line”) units. The existing Post Office Rifles was redesignated as the 1/8th Battalion, London Regiment when a second Post Office Rifles battalion, the 2/8th Londons, was formed in September 1914. In 1915 a third line battalion, the 3/8th was formed.
Between them, the three battalions earned 19 battle honours.
At the Capture of Wurst Farm, in September 1917, the 2/8th lost over half its fighting strength, dead or wounded, but its men were awarded a total of 40 gallantry medals. These included a Victoria Cross won by Sergeant A. J. Knight, making him the only Post Office Rifleman to win this honour.
While I was looking with considerable respect at the memorial a chap – also waiting for a parcel – said that his great-grandfather had fought “in that” as he economically put it. His great-grandfather had signed up as a regular soldier in 1902 and fought in virtually every battle in WW I. He was wounded but survived. I found his account of an ancestor he never met more touching than the subsequent ceremony at my club. My guest at the club-do had earlier attended a short ceremony at his office in the City before coming to St James’s. He does not work for a British company so it is especially pleasing that they also observed Remembrance Day.