The bullet-ridden notebook of a lovelorn Surbiton bank clerk has given a glimpse into the lives of the men who fought and died at the Somme during the First World War.

Second Lieutenant Philip Woollatt was among the first of thousands who fell in the killing fields of France during the summer offensive of 1916. Lt Woollatt's name is recorded, along with his brother who also died at the Somme, on the war memorial of the Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, where both had been pupils.

A shredded leather-bound notebook is the only remaining trace left of 21-year-old Lt Woollatt after it was recovered during the fighting. The book's yellowed pages, nearly torn in half by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel, tell of a man whose heart had been broken after leaving behind his sweetheart and hearing of her marriage to another. It also reveals how he never told his love, Alison Robertson, of his true feelings for her. By the time he had enlisted at the start of the war, it was already too late and she was engaged.

She would later write to him in the trenches, and a copy of one of her letters, recounting her trip to a cinema, was found tucked inside the notebook. The book itself is a stark reminder of the shelling and gunfire which British and Imperial forces endured for five months in a battle which would eventually cost 420,000 casualties. At some point a bullet hole pierced the book, stopping a few pages from the back cover - telling either of a close brush with death or of the violence of Lt Woollatt's end.

The young officer, one of four brothers and sisters, died on July 14, 1916 leading his men. His body was never found, and the pocket book is the only clue as to what happened. The book was later found in a shell hole by another soldier, with a note in pencil written in the back in Lt Woollatt's hand urging anyone who found the diary to return it to his mother's address.

Just days after the book arrived home, his older brother Claud Woollatt, a captain in the 8th Battalion of the Queens' Royal West Surrey Regiment was killed in the battle.

His mother had lost both sons in the Battle of the Somme in the space of just two months. The Somme offensive lasted 141 days, ending on November 18 1916, and was one of the bloodiest battles of the war with 57,000 British casualties on the first day. More than a million men were killed or wounded in total on both sides by the end of the battle. His will is among 278,000 last wills and testaments of soldiers killed in Britain's wars which are being preserved for future generations by archivists at Iron Mountain on behalf of Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service.

The ageing and disintegrating records which are kept under lock and key in a secret environmentally-controlled facility in Birmingham have been digitised and can be accessed through an online database.