Ernest and his wife, Rose, have been happily married for a year before he decides he should go and fight in the war. He is signing on to a pal’s battalion- every man from their village is going. Before he goes, he promises his wife two things: that he won’t be shot by a German and that he’ll come back to her at Christmas. She tells him she is pregnant. When on active service, he receives a letter which changes the way he sees the war: Rose has died in childbirth, the child also having died. Destroyed, he deserts, knowing that the only way to fulfil the two promises he has made her is through desertion and allowing himself to be sentenced to death at the courts martial, hence pleading not guilty, but giving no evidence or defence.
Apart from the timings of Beeby's desertion, this fits in well with his story.
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