Fortunes of war

Then there are gripping and previously unseen first-hand stories of serving with Captain Bligh during the mutiny on the Bounty or with Scott in the Antarctic, of Robinson Crusoe-type shipwrecks on desert islands, of a cabin’s boy’s lot on a Victorian merchant ship – and, of a less harrowing nature, quaint recipes or bizarre remedies penned centuries ago. Fifteen years ago, these tales, scrawled with stubs of pencil in trenches or on storm-tossed seas, could be yours for £100 even at a top auction house – for much less if you stumbled across such a manuscript at an antiques fair or a provincial saleroom. It is still possible, if you are lucky, to pick up an unpublished account for a few hundred pounds.

One such document emerged in 2007: the pocket diary of a South Yorkshire soldier who survived the carnage of July 1, 1916, the first day of the first battle of the Somme. The account by stretcher-bearer Walter Hutchinson fetched £7,360 because it was accompanied by his Military Medal. Even so, that was 10 times more than expected.

Private Hutchinson, who survived to return to his job as a grocer in Conisbrough, wrote of the morning thousands went “over the top” to be cut down by German machine guns. “We had to go scrambling over the poor fellows... It was one of the awful sights I had ever witnessed... Then the order came down dump everything and fix bayonets, you have got to fight for it lads. We obeyed the order like men... but had not gone far when I was hit with a piece of shell... I kept running after the boys.

“We then landed at the trench we was making for... and saw some awful sights in it for a lot of wounded men had not been got out there. Nobody seemed to know anything about us... We got into a dugout and stayed there the night.” Next day, he and his comrades were rescued.

The most recent Western Front letters to emerge are those of Lance Corporal Gordon Clippingdale, which fetched £2,400 at Bonhams.

He wrote scathingly of the “Christmas Truce” of 1914. “It makes me wild to see in the papers so many thousand Witnesses to Football match between so & so. Bah. And over here, it’s work day and night week in and week out, ruined churches & villages, fields ploughed by shells, harvests trampled in, homeless people and killing going on day by day. And at home they wear a little flag in their coat & say ‘Another Victory’ ... but little they trouble that every day some poor devil goes to his last rest.” [email protected]