The year was nineteen fourteeen, and it had been fifteen years since I'd left my father, the Lord Dunsmoor of Suffolk, and my home to chase my childish dreams. It had been fourteen years since I'd returned, battered and broken, with a new opinion of 'love' and of the 'revolution'. My father accepted his eldest son back, and I was once again the heir to his title. Back home in dear old England, I found Kathryn, the daughter of an Irish general, two years my junior, and set about making my wife. When the war began in 1914, we had been married for three years, and it had taken me that long to convince her it was she that I loved, and not the prostitute I'd been infatuated with for a month or so when I lived in Monmartyre, Paris. Those days were long ago, and I'd only been seventeen when I left.

The letter came just the day after Kathryn told me she was pregnant with my first child (oh, how I prayed for a boy!). The letter was from the Army Department Of Personel. It read:

ITo Christian Suffolk, son of The Lord Geoffrey Dunsmoor of Suffolk:
I, the Seargent General Manfield of the First Division of the royal army in servitude of his majesty, King George V, son of King Edward VII, am regretful to tell you that His Royal Majesty requires that one of every five men, ages eighteen to fourty, serve in our army. It is therefore required that you, the eldest son of the governor, Lord of Suffolk, to serve in the fifth artilary of the second division. Enclosed in this letter are directions on where to report. Good day, and may God watch over us all in these dire times, when the diabolic Germans make their way even now towards Paris.
Signed,
Seargent General A.K. Mansfeild./i

Just as the Seargent General had said, there were directions in the envelope telling my to report to a nearby army base. I was given my uniform, the rank of private first class, and orders to accompany my unit to Paris.