Terry Philpot (“Ghosts of war”, Arts, 10 May) was understandably moved by the film of a British soldier falling within seconds of going over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. However, and without wishing to belittle the losses on that day, I hope Mr Philpot will be assured that, to the best of my knowledge, no soldier was harmed during the filming of that sequence. It was enacted for the camera at a different time in a training area behind the lines identified from other footage not used in the finished film. The reasons behind the use of “fake footage” of battle scenes are discussed at length in Ghosts on the Somme: filming the battle – June-July 1916 by Alastair H. Fraser, Andrew Robertshaw and Steve Roberts (Pen and Sword Books, 2009).Da