Artist's vital war work published

Sapper Len Smith's work has been published as an e-book

A WWI artist took daring trips into No Man's Land to make vital sketches of enemy positions, a new book reveals.

Colour drawings by sapper Len Smith have been made public for the first time in a book to mark the 90th anniversary of the Armistice.

Mr Smith, from Walthamstow, a commercial artist by profession, made detailed secret sketches just yards from the German front line.

His drawings were then used by senior officers to plan military strategy.

The sketches appear in his diary, The Pictures and Diary of a Wartime Artist, originally handwritten in pencil on scraps of paper and then smuggled home from the trenches in his leggings.

The diary was re-written later and includes two Flanders poppies picked from No Man's Land in 1915 as well as a scorched German prayer book snatched from an enemy trench as British forces advanced.

It is published as an e-book.

Fake tree

Mr Smith enrolled in the 7th London Battalion and sailed for France in March, 1915.

"I was detailed to do a special job up in the trenches," he wrote.

"So I had to scramble 'over the top', making rough pencil notes over a period of four days - real hard risky work."

Mr Smith was transferred to the Royal Engineers Special Branch, where one of his jobs included sketching a tree in great detail "as close as possible" to German positions.

A steel copy of the tree was made and it was replaced at night to provide camouflage for troops to spy on the enemy.

Mr Smith died in December 1974 at Bexhill-on-Sea in East Sussex, aged 83. He carried on keeping a diary and sketching up until a few days before his death.

His wife Jessie lived to the age of 99.