To rule out the rest, he first had to get to the Ypres Salient, the stretch of battlefield where the Allied line, like a war-ravaged peninsula, jutted six miles into the German-held higher ground. And for Thomas there was only one road to the Allies’ front line, and its gatekeeper stood on the other side of the recruitment table.

Thomas reached up and fiddled with two small medals hanging from a tarnished necklace at his throat. He ran his finger over their raised images. His mum had placed the dull chain and Saint Barbara medal around his neck the morning he turned ten and first headed off to the coal mine with his dad and James. Saint Barbara was the patron saint of miners and would watch over him when Mum could not.

James had given Thomas the second medal before he left for the war. The Saint Joseph medal had belonged to their grandad, who gave it to James on his deathbed. Now it belonged to Thomas, but not for long. He pressed both medals against his chest. He didn’t care how many broken commandments it took, he would find his brother and return the medal to him. He had to.

The memory of James, dressed in his army uniform, boarding the train in Dover, led Thomas’s thoughts back home. The bustling streets of London, crammed tight with tall, soot-covered buildings and swarms of loud people competing for everyone’s attention and money, were a far cry from the dirt roads of Dover, where the colliery village residents trudged home too tired from a day in the mines to lift their heads in greeting, much less to gather in the town square to scream about politics and the war.

Thomas shut his eyes against the noise and movement swirling around him and focused on the memory of racing James to the cliffs of Dover. On their days off from the mine, they’d sit atop the cliffs, dangling their legs over the edge, and James would talk about how one day they’d buy their own boat and transport goods across the English Channel.

“Someday, Tommy, we’ll have a whole fleet of boats,” James would say. “Sullivan Brothers Shipping will be the best shipping company to sail the Strait of Dover. We’ll get Dad out of the mines before black lung claims him like Grandad, and we’ll never have to crawl beneath the ground again. Won’t it be grand, Tommy?” Then he’d reach over and muss up Thomas’s hair until every one of his cowlicks stood at attention. The brothers would spend the day talking and laughing as their bare feet rubbed against the silky white chalk of the cliff wall. They’d squint across the Channel, searching for the faint outline of France’s coast and dreaming of a future far from the dark and damp of the coal mines.

A phonograph stood on a small table to the left of one of the recruiting officers, playing John McCormack’s rendition of “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary.” Thomas watched the weighted needle bob gently atop the spinning record, marveling at how it pulled music from the etched grooves into the phonograph’s large brass horn, amplifying McCormack’s voice for everyone in the square to enjoy. Thomas tapped his foot along to the beat to calm the twitchy anxiety building in his muscles.