CHAPTER I

INTRODUCES ONE YOUNG MAN

The boys in the office were, I fancy, a bit prejudiced against him before he arrived.  It wasn’t his fault, for he was a stranger to them all, but it got about that the 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 good tempered and willing.  That is why, in a short time, the prejudice of the office gave way to open approval.  “Young Baxter may be a ‘pi’ youth, but he’s quick at his job, and nothing’s too much trouble for him,” said his boss.  And against their previous judgment the boys liked him.  He could see a joke.  He was a good sort.