Dover, June 3rd 1916

  It started with a newspaper article.

  “THE GREATEST SEA BATTLE OF MODERN TIMES”, it read in big block letters.

  The edges of the paper were yellowed and crisp from where it had lay near the

  kitchen windowsill, thrown aside by his father who had come home and slumped on

  the lounge adjoining the tiny kitchen table. He stared at the wall, having done nothing

  since coming back on extended leave from the Western Front.

  Billy sat in front of the radio polishing his shoes, buffing them with the morning’s

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  newspaper.

  “Billy, I won’t let you enlist.” His father reached for his tobacco tin but stopped,

  hesitant. “Even if it’s the last thing I’ll do.”

  Billy said nothing, uncomfortably averting his eyes towards the bold headlines of the

  discarded paper.

  GREAT NAVAL BATTLE

  GREAT NAVAL VICTORY FOR BRITIAN, 13 GERMAN SHIPS SUNK

  GREAT NORTH SEA BATTLE

  “Don’t look at that rubbish. Billy. Look at me.” His father had sprung off the lounge

  and was in front of him. Picking up the newspaper, he ran his finger roughly across a

  headline that read in searing letters, ‘HEROES OF THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND’.

  Below were seven faces that stared solemnly toward him, their faces tinted with the

  paper’s yellow hue. “You see these men? Heroes, and dead. None of them made it

  back.”

  Squeezed between the blocks of text, there was an advert for the navy. “ENGLAND

  MUST NOT AND WILL NOT BE DISSAPOINTED. RECRUITS WANTED FOR THE

  ROYAL NAVY”.

  “None of them.”