SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This semi-fictionalised account is based on a close reading of Samuel Mellor’s service dossier NAA: B2455 MELLOR RICHARD. See also Tim Lycett and Sandra Playle, ‘A Mother’s Son: The World War I Mystery of Private Richard Mellor’, Inside History, June 2013. For further reading on military executions see Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes, Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army Act (London: Pen & Sword, 1998).