My story began in the worst of nightmares, but ended in my dreams coming true. It was in the trenches, in 1917, that I knew that I could not go on. As a man I was expected to fight, to win victory, or suffer death trying. I could never do any of that, and I did succeed in escaping.

I never thought that by escaping I would become a woman. I had grown up in Islington, where my father had bought a shop on his retirement from the sea. He had brought home his lovely French wife, and settled there. My mother regretted this. Not only had her family disowned her for marrying a non-Catholic, but she soon found my father ill-tempered and selfish. I grew up speaking French as well as I could English. And although my real name was Anthony, she called me Antoine. I was very close to my mother, and it was hard for me when she died in the first few months of the war. She could not bear to hear what was happening to her beloved France, or perhaps my father was eventually too much for her. Under my mother's influence for so long I had grown up loving quiet, pleasant things. I liked flowers, listening to pleasant music and walks in the parks. I never did well at school, but could read very well. I spent much of my time reading stories. My mother had brought some French novels with her, and she had read these to me at night. I could not read French very well, but I knew most of them. After she died I found myself wanting to read them again. They all had girls or young women as heroines, but I did not mind that. At times I used to identify myself with these women, before I remembered that I was a boy.During the first two years of the war I went on working in my father's shop. This I did not do very well, and he was forever beating me.

I never cared for all that was being said about the war. All the young men in the street went off to fight. I never wanted to go, especially when I heard of so many of them being killed at the Front. Many people whispered that I had no business not being in uniform, that I was a coward, and worse. But I used to shrug it off, even when one young girl gave me a white feather. Then at the end of 1916 we all heard that the government was to start calling men up to go into the army, whether they wanted to go or not. I was terrified, for I knew it would soon be my turn.Needless to say, by February my call-up papers arrived. Of course I had to go, as someone said I may be shot if I didn't. My father laughed, saying it would make a man of me.