This is the self-portrait of a man's journey through life, schooled at two prestigious boarding schools in St. Petersburg. He was chosen as one of the two chamber pages at the wedding of Princess Alix to Tsar Nicholas II.

Commissioned into the elite Egersky Life Guards Regiment, he paints a vivid picture of regimental life: the officers' mess on Ruzovskaya Street, guard duty at the Winter Palace and Anichkov Palace, Peter and Paul Fortress and at the Tsar's coronation in Moscow, military manoeuvres at Krasnoe Selo, and life in fashionable St. Petersburg. In 1901, he attended the General Staff Academy, graduating in 1904 with the General Leontiev Prize for his thesis on strategy.

The scene changes to the Far East where Boris took part in the war against Japan. After Russia's defeat, he describes his provincial posting to a divisional HQ in Kiev before being invited to teach tactics at St. Petersburg's General Staff Academy. After obtaining his professoriate, Boris's destiny is irrevocably changed with the start of the First World War. He describes his career against the backdrop of Russia's fortunes, from the successful Galician campaign to the disastrous retreat and eventual stalemate after the Kerensky offensive and the Bolshevik takeover.