was still a student at King Edward's School, Birmingham. In 1912 he was elected to a History Exhibition at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and took up residence there in October of that year. He was looking forward to devoting himself to literature as a profession when the war, at a stroke, shattered all his plans, and he at once joined the Oxford O.T.C. In January 1915 he obtained a commission in the Oxford and Bucks Regiment, but was transferred to the 19th Lancashire Fusiliers and went with them to France in November 1915. He had a hard winter in the trenches and was in the thick of the fighting in July 1916. His letters home show how profoundly he was impressed by the horrors of war, but his native cheerfulness never failed him; his humour and good spirits were proof against all the darkness and danger of his surroundings. After the Somme advance he was made intelligence officer, and then adjutant. While walking down a village street on 29th November 1916, he was struck by a fragment of a stray shell; the wound
