Following Hugh Pearson’s death, the principal recipients of his letters, his mother Mrs Jean Pearson and his youngest sister Ursula Pearson, prepared them for publication along with extracts from his diaries. Copies were sent to London literary agents in 1928 and again in 1930, but plans to publish the memoirs as a book with the title ‘A sapper’s letters to his mother’ were never realised. It appears that this manuscript is a copy of the projected book, which was to be divided into three parts. Unfortunately the manuscript is incomplete. Where chapter divisions are missing, tentative ones have been supplied. Some of the chapters contain summaries of their contents. Some pages and parts of pages are missing or have been excised.