James Brady, serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the first world war, struggled to narrate the moment he was taken captive by German soldiers while serving on the western front. In the draft of his memoir, he crossed out and rewrote this section repeatedly.
Central to his account is what he called a “bizarre human incident” in which a “baby-faced Jerry”, speaking perfect cockney English, approached him and gave him a photograph of himself, asking Brady to keep it “as a souvenir”:
A young German standing near suddenly nudged me and with a wink said: ‘Hello kid, how old are you then?’ Taken aback, I whispered: ‘Twenty – how old are you?’ There didn’t seem much else I could say. ‘Nineteen,’ replied the baby-faced Jerry. ‘Lived in Balham till I was 15.’
