I never met Reginald Prew but I did write to him in 1986 when I was attempting to contact men who'd served with the Post Office Rifles in the hope that one of them might have known my great uncle, John Frederick Nixon. Mr Prew's daughter replied that her father's handwriting was now a little shaky and that he was unable to assist as he had been discharged in 1916 after being wounded in France. She added that he had helped to cut the Post Office Rifles badge in the chalk downs at Fovant and that until 1984 he had attended the annual drumhead service.
As can be seen from his medal index card (above), Reginald Prew landed in France on the 18th March 1915 and was discharged on the 12th August 1916. The silver war badge roll confirms that he had originally joined the 8th London Regiment on the 25th March 1913, (three weeks after his seventeenth birthday). Born in New Cross, south-east London, he was almost certainly working for the Post Office at the time of his enlistment as he appears on the 1911 census as a 15-year-old messenger.
Reginald Prew died in 1988 aged 92.
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