As I was walking through the woods one day I found a book damp and half hidden in the undergrowth

It was called Life and Adventure in British Guiana and had been written by a Frenchman called Jules Farry in 1903

I opened the book carefully expecting to find etchings and photographs of dusky maidens and well as numerous tales of daring and adventure in that land of mud

Instead I found a written account of an extraordinary war story

It seems that during the Battle of the Somme that some twenty soldiers both German and English discovered a set of tunnels dug in Napoleonic times

Tiring of the slaughter they retreated into these tunnels where they lived in peace until 1951 when they all re-emerged after a democratic vote

This is all I read as I was disturbed by a German soldier in full SS uniform who insisted that I return the book to him

I did not argue as this soldier had obviously been dead for many years for under his smart uniform only his skeleton remained

This said he had retained his wonderful blue eyes