AHEAD of a battle in the Boer War, in 1900, Major General John Headlam, of Gilmonby Hall, County Durham, wrote to his wife.

After remarking that his observation point was “just like one of tors at Oakhampton,” Devon, he reported that it was “a glorious morning, with the most interesting spectacle in the world, a great battle, developing beneath our feet.”

The glory of war was evidently still a potent force at the dawn of the 20th Century.

But Headlam’s letter also touched a more enduring theme: “You will know that if anything happens to me I thought of you and loved you to the last... I enclose some little flowers picked on the field for you and the chicks.”

Headlam survived and lived until 1946.

Not so lucky was a Major Lionel Wigram.

The first commander of a Home Forces Battle School, set up in 1941, at Barnard Castle School, he was an ardent exponent of ‘hate training.’ Urged to shout “kill, kill, kill,” and “hate, hate, hate”, his trainee soldiers were also spattered with cows’ blood during bayonet exercises and taken to an abattoir to witness the gore of a carcass being ripped apart.

Eventually serving in Italy, Wigram too relished the thrill of battle. He once complained that a fight had been “very tame, quite an anti-climax”. Yet his letters home still had the tenderness of most of their kind: “Well darling, I must say goodbye now. I miss you lots and lots and lots and I love you and the children more and more and more...” His final letter, before he was shot dead as he was accepting the surrender of an enemy soldier, bore four large Xs against each of three dedications: For You, For the big ones and For the little ones.

An aspect of war never fully looked at before, the farewell letter writing by troops is fascinatingly and movingly explored by Sian Price. North-East links stretch from an officer-son of a priest at Durham Cathedral, killed in a skirmish preceding the Battle of Waterloo, to Northallerton’s Lance Cpl Ben Hyde, the military policeman killed in Iraq. His letter to his father stated: “I’m sorry I’ve been a pain but I know the good times outweigh the bad tenfold.”

Sian Price reflects: “The reaction of families to these priceless letters has remained unchanged throughout history.”

One widow told her how her husband’s letter “sustains those of us left behind, for through the letter love lingers”. Sian met recipients who read their letter every day, others who sleep with it next to their bed. Some people take a long time to open a final letter.

Sian comments: “Farewell letters are a last tragic link with a person and reanimate the ghosts of the fallen. Be it a letter from the 18th Century or the 21st, these voices beyond the grave still speak eloquently and forcefully of the tragedy of war.”

Heartbreaking.