A series of letters and diaries gave Rebecca McQuillan an insight into life on the Western Front for a young Bradford soldier

MY great uncle Stuart's letters from the Somme are written on yellowing foolscap paper. They look and smell antique but the voice that comes through them is so fresh, it feels as if he could walk right through the door.

Stuart Chadwick was 19 in 1916, and lived with his parents Walter and Rebecca, and his four younger siblings, on Browning Street, Bradford.

Stuart was an office boy for the Bradford Hospital Fund Executive Committee, and had a girlfriend, Ruby, whom he met through church.

He was gentle, plain spoken, and not at all worldly. He should have lived a quiet, uneventful life, but the First World War robbed him of that future.

According to his 1915 diary, Stuart was 5ft 6in tall and just under seven stone – underweight, like many northern recruits at the time.

He arrived in Brocton training camp, Staffordshire, in early April with a group of other Bradford lads. His letters are full of teenage slang: "I am in the pink" and - on having tinned sausages for tea - "we were doing it large".

His family is in regular contact, providing currant cakes, chocolate biscuits, the occasional pair of socks or puttees, and even a fresh cucumber, sent all the way to France at the height of summer.

On June 23, Stuart writes: "I hope you will not worry about me, as I will write regularly and I have a good lad for a pal [Bradford boy Len Dobson], so I will be alright."

Soon after, he is sent “Somewhere in France” and transferred in early July to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI), 10th battalion.

The reason is all too clear – regiments like the KOYLIs and 16th and 18th battalions of West Yorkshire, known as the 1st and 2nd Bradford Pals, had sustained huge losses on July 1, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

On that day alone, some 650 out of 900 men of the 1st Bradford Pals, were killed or wounded. The battalion’s war diary for the day describes the futility of the assault as machine guns were trained on the British trenches: “A lot of men never got off the ladder but fell back; and many fell back from the parapet in getting over.” More young men like Stuart now took the place of the dead.

On July 27, Stuart – now in the Lewis (machine) gun section - writes to reassure his parents. "I am pleased to say I have had the best of luck out here," he says.

Then come two letters with a more sober tone. "I will not be sorry when the war is over," he writes to his sister Emily, on August 7; and to his parents: “I have had it pretty rough at times, but at the present time I am going on alright."

On September 14, he writes to the whole family sounding more cheerful, and even teases Emily, a secretary, over an increase in her workload: "As you used to say to me, she must have extra pen nibs to wipe. Well, I had better shut up or she will be telling me off when she writes again.”

About a week later, the family receives a field postcard with multiple choice options - Stuart has left open "I am quite well".

And that was the last they ever heard from him.

A fortnight later, came this letter from Len, dated September 29: "It is with deep regret that I have to write to inform you that your son Stuart was reported missing after being in action." Len speculates that he may have been taken to hospital.

Two days later, Len writes again to explain that he and his pals have shared out a parcel that arrived for Stuart.

What effect must these letters have had on the family? Cruel hope and the darkest of fears must have plagued them. And then came the letter from Len they dreaded.

It says: "I am sorry to say that nothing else has been heard of Stuart and I am afraid that he will now be in his eternal home. Please excuse this letter as my heart is full of sympathy for you all. As you know I cannot tell you much of what takes place here. I was at the side of Stuart when the order came down the trench to go over the top and attack. It will seem strange to you but when we go over we cannot see anyone but those near to us. Somehow Stuart and I got separated and afterwards when the roll was called he was not there to answer. We made inquiries but no-one seems to know what had become of him and as there was very heavy shell fire at the time, I am afraid he must have been hit by one and probably buried."

Over the next eight months, Rebecca and Walter desperately seek information, hoping against hope that he is a prisoner of war. Walter even goes to London – but all to no avail.

Stuart never was a prisoner and his body never was found. We now know that he died on the first day of the major Battle of Morval offensive. The regimental war diary held at Doncaster Museum says just this: "Battalion attacked trenches east of Gueudecourt under heavy enemy machine and artillery fire, wire was still very strong and Battalion was held up. Casualties: officers, Killed, 7; Wounded, 7. Other ranks, K.43. W.149. M.97."

M.97 - those three digits encapsulate Stuart's fate: along with 96 others, he simply went missing. The KOYLI's curatorial adviser, Stephen Tagg, believes he could have been killed by a shell; equally, the war diary suggests that attempts to break through the enemy barbed wire failed and the German gunners were mowing down British soldiers. He may have been shot outright, or, God forbid, left dying in a shell hole.

The devastation of the Morval battlefield reverberated all the way back to Bradford. Rebecca became depressed and in December 1922, she died of flu aged 53. Walter died six months later, aged 52, from hydro encephalitis.

Emily too had a nervous breakdown, in around 1919, aged 20. She recovered, but her depression returned with a vengeance on retirement and she died in 1959 in a mental hospital.

Stuart's girl Ruby never married. My mother remembers meeting her more than 25 years later, a slight woman always referred to even then as "Stuart's girlfriend".

As for my grandmother, Jessie, Stuart’s youngest sister, who lived out her adult life in Undercliffe, she was remarkably resilient. Following the loss of her brother and parents by age 19, she lost her fiancé to tuberculosis in the 1920s. But then she married my grandfather Ernest Holdsworth (a widower), became stepmother to his son (the late Telegraph & Argus drama critic, Peter Holdsworth), and went on to have two daughters. She lived a long and happy life, mostly. She was widowed in 1971, and my mother's younger sister Cathie died suddenly 11 years later, aged 43. My devastated grannie said that she seemed to lose everyone she loved the most, yet she always kept going. She was an optimist, fiercely bright and independent, and focused on the here and now.

And she never forgot her beloved brother Stuart. A few years ago, my husband and I visited the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. I stood on the podium and looked out at the fields, wondering where he might now lie.