How Britain Censored Every Soldier's Letter Home in World War Two

How Britain censored every WWII soldier's letter home | The Airgraph system flew mail 8,000 miles in 11 days using microfilm. Every letter a British soldier wrote home during the Second World War passed through a stranger's hands first. A unit officer read it before it left the field post office, drawing a line through anything that might reveal where the writer was or what he had been doing. Then it was stamped, and the letter began its journey home. By 1941, some of these letters were no longer traveling by ship at all. They were photographed onto strips of sixteen-millimetre microfilm — 1,700 letters reduced to a reel weighing five and a half ounces — flown from Cairo to London, developed by women working night shifts through the Blitz, printed at reduced size, and delivered through the ordinary post. A letter from Egypt could arrive in eleven days. A ship, in the same year, might not arrive at all. This video documents how the British censorship and postal systems worked together during the war — the Airgraph service, the Royal Engineers Postal Section operating field post offices across every wartime theatre, and what the censor's pen removed from letters before families ever saw them. If you're drawn to the documented history of the Second World War — not the campaigns, but the systems and streets that carried it — this channel covers exactly that. Every video follows one specific element of the British postal system between 1900 and 1980 through its operational reality. Next: the Travelling Post Office — the overnight railway sorters who processed Britain's mail on moving trains while the country slept. #RoyalMailMemoriesUK #WWIIHistory #WartimeLetters