On thinking it over, I date the extraordinary affairs which so thrilled England and brought me such undeserved good fortune from the day on which I tried to enlist. The position was this. My father was an engineer with a small, but apparently thriving, foundry at Derby. My mother died and my father sent me to Oxford, my younger brother, Bernard Carey, being an officer in the Navy. At Oxford, I was one of that perennial tribe of young asses who play what used to be called the "Giddy Goat" in those days with the greatest aplomb and satisfaction to themselves. I was at a good college-Exeter-for originally we were west-country people, and all sons of Devon and Cornwall go to Exeter.