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Pic: StroudAuctions/BNPS

Pictured: Captain Theodore's sketch of a soldier's Gangrene.

The poignant sketchbook of a World War One surgeon has been unearthed a century later.

Captain Theodore Howard Somervell, of the Royal Medical Corps, treated hundreds of wounded Tommies in a field hospital at the Battle of the Somme.

He was one of just four surgeons working flat-out in a tent, as scores of casualties lay dying on stretchers outside on the bloodiest in British military history.

There is a sombre pencil sketch of a soldier on the operating table surrounded by a nurse and doctors. Another watercolour shows the bodies of soldiers strewn on a boggy Western Front battlefield.

Capt Somervell, who was Mentioned In Despatches, drew landmarks including churches which were reduced to rubble in the deadly barrage. He also took rare photos of life on the frontline, including some taken inside an operating theatre. His sketchbook is being sold by a direct descendant with Stroud Auctions, of Gloucs.