HUNDREDS of customers - many of them RAF families - are preparing to fight to save a Carterton Post Office.

The Stanmore Crescent outlet, in the Spar Naafi shop, is one of only two in the expanding town and is used by wives of servicemen from RAF Brize Norton.

They are allowed to send parcels up to two kilograms free to their husbands out in Afghanistan and Iraq, under a Ministry of Defence concession.

Melanie Kelly, who runs the Post Office with Wanda Hugget, said yesterday: "A lot of people are angry we are now in line for closure, especially the RAF wives.

"They send all kinds of things as treats for their husbands who are in dangerous places - like confectionery, shaving foam, magazines and teabags, the sort of things they can't get out there.

"The Co-op, the only other Post Office in town, supports us, because they already have queues up to 40 minutes long. That is why we are so well used.

"It's not just the RAF, it's the pensioners as well. We have got 35 sheets of names on a petition, and many of them are pensioners.

"We've already written to our MP David Cameron to back us."

Carterton is west Oxfordshire's second largest town with a population of more than 15,000 people.

Others in the district earmarked for closure are at West End, Witney, Combe and Wootton, near Woodstock.

The Combe Post Office, not attached to a shop, is open only three days a week and, according to Derrick Millard, former Postwatch area co-ordinator, its closure was expected.

Mr Millard, who lives at nearby Stonesfield, said: "Overall, I think we've got away lighter than I expected for a rural area.

"But the loss of the one at West End, Witney, and the one at Wootton I can't understand.

"West End serves the whole of the north of Witney and it will mean more people queuing up at the main office in the centre of town."