Men of Letters: The Post Office Heroes who Fought the Great War is a book by Duncan Barrett,[1] co-author of The Sugar Girls and GI Brides and editor of The Reluctant Tommy.

[4] The book describes in detail the horror and suffering of the war[5] and Barrett writes about a man who was shot in the head by a former Post Office colleague before being suffocated by mud near Passchendaele.

[7] He also describes the humour of life in the trenches,[6] including an incident in which some former postmen delivered mail to the Germans on the other side of no man's land by wedging them into carrots and throwing them across.

[4] Barrett's research for the book involved reading memoirs written by men who served with the Post Office Rifles, as well as their letters and diary entries from the time, held at the Imperial War Museum and the British Postal Museum & Archive.

[1] He was in part inspired to write it after learning that his own great-great-uncle had fought alongside the Post Office Rifles at High Wood, although in a different London regiment.