According to Zadie Smith, his daughter, Harvey Smith's war "was accidental, ambivalent, unplanned". He had left school because his mother couldn't pay for the "grammar school uniform". At 17, he passed by a recruiting office, went in and signed in. He was called some months later when he was 17 and a half, he trained. He didn't expect to be part of any action before 1945, when he would turn 19, but the law changed and he was dispatched at 18.
His wasn't an heroic war, he says. The author explains "If it embodies anything (my father's not much into things embodying other things), it is the fact that when wars are fought, perfectly normal people fight them. Alongside the heroes and martyrs, sergeants and generals, there are also millions of average young people who simply tumble into it, their childhood barely behind them. Harvey was one those."
