Stuart Cloete describes with loving nostalgia Paris of La Belle Epoque, when women were feminine, fathers were stern and children seen and seldom heard except by their wet-nurses and uniformed nannies. After attending public school in England, Stuart Cloete went straight into the army, being one of the youngest commissioned officers in the war, in which he served in the Yorkshire Light Infantry, transferring later to the Coldstream Guards. Twice wounded in action, the second time very seriously, readers of How Young They Died will soon realise how much of his own story went into that novel of life in the trenches, with the blood and mud relieved only occasionally by the gaiety of London. This first volume ends in 1922 when Major Stuart Cloete, now married, resumes life in France.