A report in the T&A earlier this year about a diary kept by Bradford man Sydney Herbert Thompson of the siege of Ladysmith in the Boer War brought a letter from John Fearnley, of Cottingley, whose great-uncle Therman Kitching was a Rifleman in the King's Royal Rifles Regiment, 2nd Division, during the same siege.

Unlike Sydney Thompson, though, Therman Kitching didn't return to civilian life in Bradford. He died of enteric fever, or dysentery, on February 4, 1900, just three weeks before the four-month siege of the Natal garrison was lifted. He was 20 years old. His great-nephew has been piecing together details of his life.

Therman was the fourth son of stonemason /builder John Kitching and his wife Mary, who lived in Manningham. When he was six his father died of "dust on the lungs", leaving his mother to bring up five boys on her wages as a weaver at Lister's Manningham Mills where, in 1890-91, she found herself caught up in the strike which, as Mr Fearnley says, convulsed Bradford and led to the founding of the Labour Party.

Mr Fearnley writes: "The management at Lister's begged Mary to return to work as the other girls' would follow her, but she refused to break the strike."

As a boy, Therman loved animals, especially horses. At some time during the 1890s he ran away from home and joined the army, lying about his age.

That's how he ended up in South Africa in 1899. He adored working with horses and according to family lore it "broke his heart" when so many of the starving animals had to be slaughtered at Ladysmith and turned into "chervil", or horse meat to feed the beleaguered troops.

After Mary Kitching died around 1938 her granddaughters Joan and Margaret (Mr Fearnley's mother) found among her effects, still intact, a tin of chocolate which had been sent out to Therman and to all other troops in the Boer War by Queen Victoria.

"Mary had kept that tin of chocolate, returned to her in Bradford after Therman's death, for nearly 40 years," writes Mr Fearnley.

A letter sent to him by Maureen Richards, curator of the Beleg-Siege Museum at Ladysmith, confirms that Therman was one of the many soldiers to die of enteric fever at Intombi Camp, where 10,000 cases were treated during the four months of the siege.

"It is unlikely that there is a grave for him," she wrote. "During the last month of the siege deaths occurred at a rate of 28 per day and these were merely sewn into blankets, ticketed, and buried in mass graves. Grave diggers were too weak (and starved) to dig individual graves, along with the fact that they could not keep up with demand."

His name lives on in the roll of honour though.