War Letters, edited by Andrew Carroll (Simon & Schuster £12.99)

THEY sit on the page in all their starkness, unhindered by full stop or comma, yet oozing with the immediacy and urgency of the moment.

Quite what it is that propels soldiers into confessions on paper - possibly moments before death or injury - will probably always remain a mystery.

What we do know is that as they face their time of trial, men-at-arms have for long been moved to commit their innermost thoughts to paper and therefore posterity.

The reader will be greatly moved by what is contained within these pages. There are powerful evocations of love and sacrifice, fear and confusion, courage and perseverance, rage, duty and honour.

Here are thoughts rung from the inner recesses of souls that may be about to embark on a one-way journey to eternity.

War Letters pays tribute to the ordinary people whose lives were stricken by war and celebrates the enduring power of their personal letters.

One is struck time and again by the immediacy of some of these communiques, many of which relate the course of battles as they unfolded.

There is the bloody Battle of Shiloh from the perspective of a Federal trooper... the butcher's bill after Confederate General Pickett's ill-fated charge at Gettysburg.

Attacks on German positions in France during the First World War are described by infantrymen whose job was to do or die - and from the sands of Iwo Jima the modern-day reader can gain some understanding of the hell that was a textbook frontal beach assault.

War Letters is not just for the military buff. It is fascinating reading for anyone with a taste for prose rough-hewn from the volcano's mouth of human struggle and strife.

These accounts are, without doubt, cut from lives so raw that the blood still runs off the pages.

John Phillpott