STATISTICS about the First World War never cease to startle.

On March 21, 1918, 7,485 British soldiers died. Only 978 have a known grave.

It wasn't the first day on the Somme - or any day on the Somme. It wasn't Ypres, Passchendaele, Arras or any of the First World War battlefields that have seared themselves into public consciousness.

Largely forgotten now, it was a widespread late German offensive, which almost succeeded. And among those luckless 7,485 was a North Yorkshire country lad, Jack Garbutt, from Bilsdale. Aged 22, he died at Epehy, east of Amiens, when an ammunition wagon he was escorting, came under heavy shell fire. His body was never recovered.

Six months earlier Jack had written to his sister Gladys: "I never thought I should be out here two years and it looks as though we shall be out here for another two. I am sick of writing about the war."

He had also confided: "There is a good deal of mud about.

Everything is the same over and over again. It is hell on earth at times." His survival even for two years now looks a miracle. He once reported: "A piece of shrapnel cut a bit right out of my steel helmet. Fortunately, I was none the worse, only a little shook up." His next sentence was: "You upset me when you said Father was very bad."

Almost 50 letters from Jack, a volunteer rather than a conscript, and a handful sent to him, still survive.

Wartime logs of the Royal Field Artillery, with which he served, allow his daily movements to be tracked.

A descendant, his great niece Susan Laffey, has brought these and other sources together to tell Jack's story - typical, no doubt, of countless thousands. She rounds it off by describing her own search for Jack's name, which does not appear on the great memorials at Menin and Thiepval.

Susan traced it to a panel at Pozieres, where she was able to write a tribute in the visitors' book. A teacher, she now tells Jack's story to students, sometimes while standing by the memorial plaque during battlefield visits. She says: "It is important that people know what he and millions of men like him went through in the name of freedom, from the disaster of Loos, to the carnage of the Somme, to the mud of Passchendaele, ending in the near defeat of the spring offensive."

Yes, Jack Garbutt experienced all that.

From the Somme he wrote: "I am never done having wet feet." The response from Bilsdale brought this: "Miss Parry's socks fit a treat and are just the thing for wear and warmth." Soon, the Bilsdale farmer's son was jauntily signing off his letters "Bon Soir": a cheerful gesture from deep in hell.