Who is Rudyard Kipling from Time's Eye and what is their importance?

A journalist who writes for the Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer from Lahore, Ruddy is stationed with Josh in the fort at Jamrud. He has an occasional passion for opium, but this seems to have little or no effect on this nineteen year old. Ruddy wears thick glasses for nearsightedness, and has a mustache that he pulls at absentmindedly. At the age of five, he had been sent to foster parents in Southsea to a place called Lorne Lodge. He considered himself to have been abandoned and took comfort from playing games like Robinson Crusoe with his sister. It is ironic to him that now he finds himself on a real journey of adventure starting with a trip to the North-West Frontier and then an unintended side trip to the Middle Ages.