To be perfectly frank with myself and with the reader I had no very
lofty motives when I took the King's shilling. When the great war
broke out, I was mildly sympathetic with England, and mighty sorry
in an indefinite way for France and Belgium; but my sympathies were
not strong enough in any direction to get me into uniform with a
chance of being killed. Nor, at first, was I able to work up any
compelling hate for Germany. The abstract idea of democracy did not
figure in my calculations at all.

However, as the war went on, it became apparent to me, as I suppose
it must have to everybody, that the world was going through one of
its epochal upheavals; and I figured that with so much history in
the making, any unattached young man would be missing it if he did
not take a part in the big game.

I had the fondness for adventure usual in young men. I liked to see
the wheels go round. And so it happened that, when the war was
about a year and a half old, I decided to get in before it was too
late.

On second thought I won't say that it was purely love for adventure
that took me across. There may have been in the back of my head a
sneaking extra fondness for France, perhaps instinctive, for I was
born in Paris, although my parents were American and I was brought
to Boston as a baby and have lived here since.

Whatever my motives for joining the British army, they didn't have
time to crystallize until I had been wounded and sent to Blighty,
which is trench slang for England. While recuperating in one of the