'I would rather die a man's death than feel I had failed': British Tommy's stoic letter from the Trenches is tipped to fetch £3,000 at auction Captain Walter Cornock wrote to his father in June 1917 and said he was driven by an enormous sense of duty Capt Cornock said people are 'unnecessarily afraid of death' in the stoic letter He distinguished himself during the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 and the 1918 German Spring Offensive