Of the hero of this story I know little, but as that little is known perhaps only to me, I record it. It must have been some time in 1915 that I first met him. At a dismal ‘depôt’ in the Midlands, I was sharing a leaky tent with a fellow Second Lieutenant known to his friends as ‘Jimbo.’ As we were endeavouring, by means of a Primus stove, to dry some clothes faster than the leakage of the tent wetted them, we were nowise pleased to hear that a newcomer was allotted to our tent, and to have to make room for the baggage that his batman dropped squelching in the entrance. Its owner soon followed, muttering frightful things about the climate and the Kaiser.

He would have been tall if he had not stooped. He had thick black eyebrows that almost met, and that gave nim a scowling expression belied by the genial smile of his thick lips. We soon learned that he was our senior as an officer, and that he was some kind of engineer oy profession. It was some hours later that I found he was a Catholic. Though naturally silent, he was by no means unsociable, and he dropped into his place in that tent as though he had known us for years.