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it quick. Once I remember that we left our empty ambulance and sheltered in a doorway for a time, and the vehicles got hit by rifle fire once or twice, by ricochets rather than by direct aim.
    In this party I was a callow youth acting as a labourer and a runner for more experienced people; I would not like it to be thought that I was playing a great part. At the conclusion of hostilities we were inspected and thanked by the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in Ireland, General Sir John Maxwell, and months afterwards the St. John’s Ambulance Society produced a very noble parchment talking about gallant conduct in tending the wounded at great personal risk, which still hangs in my study as a reminder of an adventure that befell the boy of seventeen who was myself.
    War was new to England in those days, and you got a great deal for doing very little. For me, however, it was another push along the road to self-confidence, and when I got back to Shrewsbury a few days late for school I found to my own wonder that people were beginning to listen to what I said, or rather, stammered.
    At that time, in 1916, no end to the war with Germany was in sight. My father decreed that if with my stammer I could get a commission in the regular army I should doso; I think he may have been influenced a little by the consideration that the training was now considerably longer than that deemed necessary for a temporary officer, for I was now his only child. As I was mechanically inclined he decided that I ought to go for a commission in the Royal Engineers or the Artillery, and to get in to Woolwich meant passing a fairly stiff competitive examination.
    I sat for this once, and failed, but I had still time to take it again before the limiting age of 18½ was reached. To make sure of it this time my parents removed me from Shrewsbury at Christmas 1916 and sent me to a cramming establishment in London for six months, a step which was made easier by the fact that my father had been transferred back to London. The appointment of an Englishman had been a sore point when my father had become Secretary to the Post Office in Ireland in the first instance; to assist in the pacification of the country he was moved back to London and an Irishman was appointed in his place. My parents took a large flat in Kensington and furnished a bed sitting room in it as a study for me, going to great pains over that room. They bought a large roll-top desk for me, second hand, for five pounds; that desk has followed me around for most of my life and most of my books have been written at it.
    I passed into Woolwich in the summer of 1918 near the bottom of the list, and somewhat to my own surprise I managed to get through the medical without stammering. I joined the Royal Military Academy soon afterwards, where my officers rapidly discovered that on occasion I still stammered quite a bit. I had elected for the Royal Flying Corps, however, which saved me from being chucked out at an early stage, and I trained as a Gunner for nine months to my own great content till Nemesis overtook me at Easter 1918 shortly before I passed out as a commissioned officer. At that date the Royal FlyingCorps ceased to be a part of the army and became a separate entity, the Royal Air Force, so that no more Woolwich cadets were commissioned into the air arm. By that time I was stammering very badly from overwork and general war strain, and at my final medical examination before passing out I failed and was chucked out to become a civilian again.
    My parents were still anxious for me to get a commission, and though I knew by that time that the right course for me was to go into the ranks I agreed to try another three months treatment for the stammer in an attempt to get commissioned into the Royal Air Force. I was depressed and apathetic at that time, and it would have been much wiser if I had enlisted straight away instead of hanging around; for one reason or another I never got into the R.A.F.