After being called up and trained for combat, he was sent to the Isle of Grain for a time and, fortunately for him (and for us), the war ended and he was spared. Nevil knew it was just a matter of time before he, too, was sent to France to die-it was the fate of all young men. His mother and father had rushed to his bedside. Two years on, his brother, who Nevil said was the real literary one, was dying from shell wounds and gangrene inflicted at the Front in France. He later received a commendation for his bravery. As a young lad of seventeen, Nevil acted as a stretcher bearer during those dangerous hours. The Irish didn’t much like an Englishman being sent to run their postal system! Luckily, Nevil’s dad was in another building at the time or he may have been a casualty. The rebels rushed into the post office and took it over. Nevil happened to be standing on Sackville Street in Dublin, near the post office, when all hell broke loose the armed Irish uprising had begun. Nevil described how happy he and his brother, Fred, had been. His father was to be the Post Master for the British Postal Service.
In 1915, Nevil and his family were sent to Ireland. Later, he rode into Kensington and spent hours in the British Museum studying the engineering exhibits like trains and planes. So, he played truant, rode the trains or sat on railways stations observing the hubbub. Life was an unbearable misery and he could not take it.
He was made fun of at his school in Hammersmith, not only by his school mates, but by his teachers, too. He was lucky in that he had wonderful parents. He’d overcome so much from being a child with a bad stammer. I first read Slide Rule years ago after enjoying many of Shute’s other books, and it shaped my life in many ways.
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