Thankfully, Lt. Col. Beard had adopted a headmasterly approach to his ‘young gentlemen’ and had recorded his first impressions of their character and potential in a lovingly kept personal diary.

Terry Denham had been good enough to let me see the extracts concerning the Hartley interview.

From the diary, it was obvious that Beard had haboured some doubts about Hartley. He noted these in terse phrases, written in a copperplate script.

"Lacks experience in dealing with men. Requires a steady and experienced NCO."

According to the records, Hartley had been appointed to No. 14 platoon where a former regular, Sergeant Tommy Nulty provided a steadying influence.

Nulty had spent the bulk of his military service in India, the Crown Jewel of the Empire. He was proud to have been a soldier in the army which policed sizeable portions of the globe.

In time he grew to be equally proud of the lads in the 7th Mudshires.

Remarkably, I was able to find his recollections of those early days in the ‘Mudcaster Observer’ 50 years later, when he was among a number of elderly local men interviewed for a ‘Somme Anniversary Special’.

"The lads weren’t much good for parade ground work but they were keen, patriotic and serious about their training," he said.

Reading the account, I couldn’t help thinking that these qualities would have drawn derisive comments from Tommy’s mates amongst the ‘Bundhook Boys’ of the old army.

"Our officer was a Mr. Hartley. Had turned out to be a decent bloke too. He took to soldiering well and I’m still proud to say that our No.14 platoon was the best in the battalion," he told the Observer’s reporter.

Tommy Nulty had steered Hartley’s platoon through all the troubled waters of training. Now he was satisfied that everything was ship-shape and he was confident they would acquit themselves well in action.

For the hard detail of the battalion’s service in the Great War, I knew that a copy of the unit war ‘diary’ would be essential.

In short, the war diary is the equivalent of a captain’s log on a ship. For most days there will only be a few lines of mundane information but they really become interesting when the unit is ‘up the line’ or becomes involved in a major action.

In my previous research, I’d relied on a rather glorified history of the battalion written about 10 years after the war ‘for the men’ at the behest of Lt. Col. Beard. It was a slim volume, privately published and written in the overblown language of the time.

There was no action which was not gallant; attacks were ‘pressed home with great dash’ and, of course, ‘the spirit of the men never faltered.’

I needed the real deal. And that meant a trip to the smoke. Thanks to Mrs. Wills’ generous donation, I’d be travelling first class – which is nice.

But first, I’d have to book a few documents at the National Archives.