Eric P. Kelly was bom on March 16, 1884, in Amesbury, Massachusetts, attended his hometown high school and then Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1906. He then spent what he later described as "ten colorless, uneventful, and discouraging years" working for various Massachusetts newspapers. He also wrote short stories, two of which were finally published in 1916, ten years after his graduation from college.

By the end of World War I, in 1918, Kelly was in charge of the Foyer de Soldat (the French YMCA) at Quentin, France, where his duties included working with Polish soldiers in nearby regimental schools and supplying them with entertainment, athletics, and a canteen—a place they could relax, play cards, talk, and eat. Two years later, during the war between the Poles and Russian-backed Bolshevik forces determined to carry Russia's recent Communist Revolution into Poland (a war the Poles eventually...