e dear old "chief" had decided to engage
a real good Sunday-school boy. Someone had heard him say, or, more
likely, thought it would be funny to imagine him saying, that the
advent of such a boy might "improve the general tone" of the place.
That, you'll admit, was pretty rough on Sydney Baxter--the boy in
question. Now Sydney Baxter is not his real name, but this I can vouch
is his true story. For the most part it is told exactly in his own
words. You'll admit its truth when you have read it, for there isn't a
line in it which will stretch your imagination a hair's breadth. It's
the plain unvarnished tale of an average young man who joined the
army because he considered it his duty--who fought for many months.
That's why I am trying to record it; for if I tell it truly I shall
have written the story of many thousands--I shall have written a page
of the nation's history.

And so I need not warn you at the beginning that this book does _not_
end with a V.C. and cheering throngs. It may possibly end with wedding
bells, but you will agree there's nothing out of the common about
that--and a good job too.

I think on the whole I will keep Sydney Baxter's real name to myself.
For one thing he is still in the army; for another he is expected back
at the same office when he is discharged from hospital. It's rather
beginning at the wrong end to mention the hospital at this stage, but,
as I've done so, I'd better explain that after going unscathed through
Ypres and Hill 60, and all the trench warfare that followed, Sydney
Baxter was wounded in nine places at the first battle of the Somme on
that ever-glorious and terrible first of July. He is, as I write,
waiting for a glass eye; he has a silver plate where part of his
frontal bone used to be; is minus one whole finger, and the best part
of a second. He is deep scarred from his eyelid to his hair. I can
tell you he looks as if he had been through it. Well, he has.

He was nicknamed "Gig-lamps" in the office. He wore large spectacles
and his face was unhealthily lacking in traces of the open air. He was
in demeanour a very typical son of religious parents--well brought up,
shielded, shepherded, a little spoiled, a little soft perhaps, and
maybe a trifle self-consciously righteous. A good boy, a home boy. No
need for me to pile on the adjectives--you know exactly the kind of
chap he was. One more thing, however, and very important--he had a
sense of humour and he was uniformly g