A year later the war was mired in stalemate. Conscription, which went into effect in January 1916, made Lewis’s decision for him. He could not remain behind while other men his age were sent to the front; he resigned himself to the prospect of enlisting. “It makes me so sad to think I shall have only two more sets of holidays of the good old type,” he wrote, “for in November comes my 18th birthday, military age, and the ‘vasty fields’ of France, which I have no ambition to face.”
