The Publishers wish to state that this is a book of absolute fact—not a work of fiction. From cover to cover it is the truth, and the truth only—a record exact and faithful, both in large things and in small, of the short years of a boy who willingly and even joyously gave up his life and all its brilliant promise for the sake of his country. Even the tragic coincidence of the news of his death reaching his home in the very hour in which he himself was expected there on leave, is what actually o

"It is not a song in the street, and a wreath on a column, and a flag flying from a window and a pro-Boer under a pump. It is a thing very holy and very terrible, like life itself. It is a burden to be borne; a thing to labour for and to suffer for and to die for; a thing which gives no happiness and no pleasantness ... but a hard life, an unknown grave, and the respect and bared heads of those who follow."— John Masefield. (Quotation found written in a notebook in the pocket of "Little Yeogh Wo

It is half-past nine o'clock at night and I, an eager-hearted woman, sit waiting still for dinner, with a letter open before me from my son in the fighting line. It is addressed to me in his pet name for me:— France , 10.12.15. Dearest Big Yeogh Wough ,— I feel very distressed about a sentence in a letter of Vera's that arrived a few minutes ago. I have been away from my battalion for nearly ten days now, and in consequence all my correspondence is waiting for me there and cannot be sent on beca

These pictures rush back across my mind with intense vividness as I sit waiting. It is between a fortnight and three weeks since I first had the hope that he might come home on this second leave. The way the sudden hope affected me showed me how little I had expected that he would ever come home again. I had lived through the fearfulness and anguish of his death so many times in the early days when he had just gone out to the Front. One day in particular I remember when, in the quiet of the big

There is nothing like smells, or clothes, for bringing back the past. The scent of the American currant will always bring my childhood back to me when even music could not do it. The hardest-hearted criminal can be softened sometimes to yielding and to tears by some smell that brings back an old home life long since forgotten. In the same way the sight of clothes worn in other days sends the memory darting back across the years. So it was with me when I was rummaging among my Little Yeogh Wough'

I went to look at his room, feeling that it ought to be done up before he comes home. It would certainly be improved by new wallpaper, but I dare not have this improvement made. Superstition reminds me that I have often noticed how unlucky people have been who have had their bedrooms done up. They are always either ill in the rooms or else never occupy them any more. I decided at once that I would not have it done. The room was attractive enough, as it is, with its high, narrow, mirror-hung door

I know exactly the kind of woman this is. Even in my indignation, I could not help half-smiling as I remembered certain angry complaints made by a fashionable mother whom I had met at a War charity meeting. "It really is a shame that you can't let your fresh-minded boy go out into the world without his coming across snare-laying women," she had burst out confidentially. "The poor silly fellows get quite led astray by some of these girls that they meet where they're billeted—shoddy girls with a c

It was considered to be a part of my steady spoiling of Little Yeogh Wough that, while he was still only seven years old, I sent for him to come over to us in Paris, where we were staying for three months at the Hôtel Meurice. As a matter of fact, it was in order that he might not be utterly spoiled that I sent for him. I had very strong doubts as to the discipline that was being kept up at the London house by the old Nurse, under the supervision of my sweet-natured, but too gentle and yielding,

The reason for his looking less like a picture was that for two or three months he had to wear glasses. The beautiful brown velvet eyes, with their curling dark lashes, were not strong. I wonder why it is that spectacles spoil the look of ninety-nine faces out of a hundred, whereas pince-nez give an air of style and importance? Pince-nez make a poor man look well off, while spectacles, even with gold rims, can always be thoroughly depended on to make a multi-millionaire look poor. On the other h

I went in earlier than he expected one evening in answer to his never-failing appeal: "Come and see me in bed, mother!" and found him sitting up in his berth with a scrap of pencil and a crumpled pocket notebook and his eyes glued on something that he saw through his open porthole. He had the top inner berth, on the corridor side of the cabin, and by looking across the corridor he could get a complete view of nearly the whole of the dining-room of the liner. He thrust his pencil and paper out of

There was one thing which more than any other had power to rouse whatever demon of Temper lurked far down under the sweetness of Little Yeogh Wough's nature; and that was Croquet. It is no wonder that a well-known judge said a year or two ago in his court that from personal experience he knew croquet to be more trying to the temper than anything else in the world. And the objectionable game was at the root of a good deal of trouble that arose at this time between the Boy and me. He never could b

There was another evening on which the boy of my heart was allowed to take the first bloom off the hot-water supply in the bathroom, instead of having to indulge his love of a hot bath at some other and more inconvenient time of the day; and this was the evening before he set out for the first time for the Public School on the Tableland. He was a very shy and nervous boy when he went, though he was to be prince-like in his pride when he came back. "That there Master Roland 'ull have a bilious at

Only once in all his life has Little Yeogh Wough's love ever seemed to fail me, and that was at just about the time when his Public School career was coming to a close. I had done a thing that I hardly ever do. I had defied one of my superstitions. And I had been punished for doing it. My husband had asked me to let him paint my portrait. He had been asking me the same thing for years past, and I had always refused, remembering the injunction that: "Thou shalt not make to thyself the likeness of

He was at Aldershot with the Officers' Training Corps of his school on that Fourth of August on which the world looked in the face of the fact that Great Britain had declared war against Germany. One never knows one has been living through happy days until they have gone. Then, looking back, one sees that the way of life that one had thought quite grey and ordinary was all aglow with heavenly light. A good many things had happened since the night when the Boy and I had patched up the little trou

Sometimes in the midst of my aching, tearing anxiety I found myself laughing out suddenly at the remembrance of some of the Boy's delightful extravagances; at how, for instance, one night when his battalion was stationed about three and a half miles away from us, he had driven up all that distance and back in a taxicab at midnight in order to get eighteenpence in ready money for a tip for the cab driver. He had been a short journey in the cab already, but the cost of that was going to be put dow