James is the youngest of the Smith family. He hero-worships his brother Charles. He is intelligent and does well at school, he is happy to run errands for his mother and tries to do as he's told. He has always felt secure and protected and is closer to his mother than his father. He believes in the Empire and is proud to be British, but deep down he is conflicted. He loves being in the cadets and playing at soldiers, but he also finds himself having strange, unnamed feelings for some of the other boys, especially his best friend George.
Leith on James Smith;
is very eager to please, he looks up to his older brother Charles who is in the Forces. He's a cadet and he wants to join the Army. James has got a bit of a secret in that he is gay. James is very patriotic, he's very pro-British and although he doesn't go to war at all, he experiences the kind of tension that people at home would have felt. It's quite interesting and quite eye opening, for sure."
