A few days later, Smith and his bride were recalled to Romania, arriving just as Britain declared war on Germany. Smith was exempt from military service due to his work with the British Council, though it is likely that his poor eyesight would have meant failing the required medical. During their 13 months in Romania, Smith and Manning witnessed the approaching war, including the abdication of King Carol and the rise of Fascism. The couple's experiences were to form the basis of the first two novels of the "Fortunes of War", "The Great Fortune" and "The Spoilt City". Smith appears in the novel as the central character of Guy Pringle, a large, extroverted, and gregarious communist who pays little attention to his new wife while lavishing attention and time on everybody else. The Smiths participated regularly in the café society, but Manning often went home early, leaving her new husband to expound earnestly but naively on the merits of communism, including how much better Jews would be well treated in a Russian-occupied Romania, and excusing the Soviet pact with Hitler, and the Red Army's invasion of Finland. Just as in the novels, Smith's name was broadcast by the Gestapo as that of a spy.