3In August 1916 Michael saw a name which he knew in the casualty lists: “Ogilvie, Dixon, Pte., K.O.S.B., missing, believed killed.”
He thought this over for two days, then got up one morning and dressed in his blue overalls as usual, but instead of going to the works he walked off in the direction of London. Walked, because he did not want to run the risk of being seen at the station by anyone who knew him. On the road he had the luck to get a lift on a Foden steam wagon which took him as far as Guildford; from there he went by train to London and walked into a recruiting office off Conduit Street.
There he waited in a queue and stared at the little posters of German atrocities on the walls. One was a picture of some British fishermen captured by Germans and taken to Hamburg; the Germans
