When Scottish squaddie Duncan MacFarlane was handed a Bible it is doubtful he knew just how important it would become.

For the holy book he kept in his breast pocket miraculously saved him from almost certain death when he was shot amid one of the First World War’s bloodiest battles.

Pte MacFarlane was seriously wounded while serving in the trenches during the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele, on October 18, 1917.

He was missing in action for six months before his wife Agnes tracked him down to a military hospital in Edinburgh. The wounded postman still had the Bible which saved him from the full force of the bullet.

For more than a century his family have kept it. And now Jo Abbott, his granddaughter, has said it is time for the Bible and other tokens of his military career to be ‘taken out of the drawer’ so his extraordinary story can be shared.

The 75-year-old said: ‘The bullet lodged in the spine of his service Bible which was in his breast pocket.

‘Inside the Bible it actually has his name, the Gordon Highlanders, and his service number – so that provenance is proved.’

The remarkable objects are to go on display at the Dunscore Heritage Centre, Dumfriess-shire, where they can be viewed every Sunday afternoon for the season. Pte MacFarlane was born in 1890 and enlisted in 1915. He served in the 5th Argyll then transferred to the 4th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders.

In October 1917, when he was shoring up trenches and repairing barbed wiring on the Western Front, he was shot several times. Passchendaele saw both sides suffer heavy casualties. It lasted more than 100 days with the allies advancing about five miles for the loss of more than 250,000 soldiers killed, wounded or missing. Pte MacFarlane was one of those.

Ms Abbott said: ‘My grandmother only recognised him by his eyes. When she went to the hospital he had bandages all around his head and face and all around his chest.’

He was honourably discharged on February 28, 1919. As with many veterans, it was not just the physical injuries he carried with him for the rest of his life, but mental ones too.

Ms Abbot said: ‘He had all these terrible, terrible nightmares where he was shouting and screaming and crying. Nowadays it would be PTSD, but in those days these poor guys came home and that was it.’

Pte MacFarlane died in 1962 at the age of 72.

Members of the Gordon Highlanders Regimental Association will join the family for a ceremony at Dunscore Church on Sunday. At the end of the season the collection will then be donated to the Gordon Highlanders museum in Aberdeen.