THE letters that Captain John Lindley wrote home from the trenches of Gallipoli and hospital in Mesopotamia were discovered in a drawer a few years ago and have been compiled into book form by his son, who lives in Guisborough. They are remarkably chit-chatty considering a war is raging around him – even when he’s in hospital with a heel wound, he’s writing almost casually about the songs of the birds.

This, though, makes the passages about the horrors he’s witnessed all the more shocking.

“The night we went up to the trenches I noticed what I took to be men asleep along the gullyside.

There were about 20 of them, and on passing I noticed the stench and knew that they were dead. A bit further on a dead mule about put the cap on for me.”

Available from Guisborough Bookshop or via lindleybooks.co.uk