Tommy

Produced by Al Haines
Facing Fearful Odds O'er Moor and Fen The Wilderness Rosaleen O'Hara The Soul of Dominie Wildthorne Follow the Gleam David Baring The Trampled Cross
My only qualification for writing this simple story of Tommy is that I have tried to know him, and that I greatly admire him. I met him before he joined the army, when for more than six months I addressed recruiting meetings. I have also been with him in training camps, and spent many hours talking with him. It was during those hours that he opened his heart to me and showed me the kind of man he is. Since then I have visited him in France and Flanders. I have been with him down near La Bassée, and Neuve Chapelle. I have talked with him while great guns were booming as well as during his hours of well-earned rest, when he was in a garrulous mood, and was glad to crack a joke wi' a man wearin' a black coat. I have also been with him up at Ypres, when the shells were shrieking over our heads, and the pep, pep, pep of machine guns heralded the messengers of death. We stood side by side in the front trenches, less than a hundred yards from the German sand-bags, when to lift one's head meant a Hun's bullet through one's brain, and when woolly bears were common. So although I am not a soldier, and have probably fallen into technical errors in telling the story of Tommy, it is not because he is a stranger to me, or because I have not tried to know him.
Only a small part of this story is imagination. Nearly every incident in the book was told me by Tommy himself, and while the setting of my simple tale is fiction, the tale itself is fact.
That is why I hope the story of Tommy will not only be read by thousands of men in khaki, but by their fathers and mothers and loved ones who bade them go to the Front, and who earnestly pray for their speedy and victorious return, even as I do.
PRIORS' CORNER, TOTTERIDGE, HERTS, February 1916.
The Brunford Town Hall clock was just chiming half-past three as Tom Pollard left his home in Dixon Street and made his way towards the Thorn and Thistle public-house. It was not Tom's intention to stay long at the Thorn and Thistle, as he had other plans in view, nevertheless something drew him there. He crossed the tram lines in St. George's Street, and, having stopped to exchange some rustic jokes with some lads who stood at the corner of the street, he hurried across the open space and quickly stood on the doorsteps of the public-house.