How I enlisted in the army:

I was only fifteen and every time I’ve tried to join up in it was no good, they wouldn’t have me. So I went by rail to another town, on a penny platform ticket. I went into a recruiting office there and I told them I was seventeen. The sergeant said, “why don’t you go out and have something to eat? When you come back you might be older”. I told him I had no money and he gave me two bob. When I came back he spoke to me as if he had never seen me before. I said I was eighteen and, this time, I got in all right.