HISTORICALEIGH - A POSTMEN OF LEIGH PLAYS HIS PART

December 21, 2015 by Carole Mulroney

A POSTMEN OF LEIGH PLAYS HIS PART

The Great War placed many strains on the postal service mainly brought on by the recruitment of postmen into the services. Where there were normally fewer than 4 (YES 4) deliveries, the service should be maintained; where there were 4 or more deliveries the service should be reduced in proportion to the fall in correspondence, with a maximum of 6 deliveries.

At the peak of the War 12,500,000 letters were sent to the Western Front every week. So the Postal Service was vital for the troops writing home and the families bringing comfort and support to the lads in the trenches even though censored for fear of infiltration and passing on information unwittingly.

With postwomen taking over the role the postmen of Leigh joined up and by 1917 four of Leigh’s postmen had been lost in the war.

Corporal T Lewis of Cranleigh Drive was a reservist called up immediately the war began. He managed to get through all the fighting although wounded and gassed, and won the Distinguished Conduct Medal for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty at Pilkem. The Rifle Brigade charged the Germans out of their position but the Germans attempted to take it back but the British hung on and beat them back. Rifleman Lewis was a bomb thrower and had to stop in the trenches after his regiment was relieved. He was the last one left of the battalion bomb throwers when a ‘Jack Johnson’ (German 15-cm artillery shell ) hit the trench and buried him under 4ft of earth.

He escaped with a nasty shaking and several comrades helping him to get out. However, he was among others killed in a troop train disaster at Massy-Palaiseau in France in 1917.