Goodbye to All That

by Robert Graves

That my father is a poet has, at least, saved me from any false reverence for poets.

In England, parents of the governing classes virtually lose all intimate touch with their children from about the age of eight, and any attempts on their parts to insinuate home feeling into school life are resented.

At least one in three of my generation at school died; because they all took commissions as soon as they could, most of them in the infantry and Royal Flying Corps. The average life expectancy of an infantry subaltern on the Western Front was, at some stages of the war, only about three months; by which time he had been either wounded or killed.

In the first place, though the papers predicted only a very short war – over by Christmas at the outside – I hoped that it might last long enough to delay my going to Oxford in October, which I dreaded.

But a rifle-bullet, even when fired blindly, always seemed purposely aimed.

Well, anyhow, marching on cobbled roads is difficult, so when a staff-officer came by in a Rolls-Royce and cursed us for bad march-discipline, I felt like throwing something at him.

At no time in the war did any of us believe that hostilities could possibly continue more than another nine months or a year, so it seemed almost worth while taking care; there might even be a chance of lasting until the end absolutely unhurt.

One day I left the mess to begin the afternoon’s work on the drill-ground, and passed the place at which bombing instruction went on. A group of men stood around a table where the various types of bombs were set out for demonstration. I heard a sudden crash. A sergeant of the Royal Irish Rifles had been giving a little unofficial instruction before the proper instructor arrived. He picked up a No. 1 percussion-grenade and said: ‘Now lads, you’ve got to be careful here! Remember that if you touch anything while you’re swinging this chap, it’ll go off.’ To illustrate the point, he rapped the grenade against the table edge. It killed him and the man next to him and wounded twelve others more or less severely.

What I most disliked in the Army was never being alone, forced to live and sleep with men whose company, in many cases, I would have run miles to avoid.

England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war-madness that ran wild everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language; and it was newspaper language. I found serious conversation with my parents all but impossible.

We no longer saw the war as one between trade-rivals: its continuance seemed merely a sacrifice of the idealistic younger generation to the stupidity and self-protective alarm of the elder.

War should be a sport for men above forty-five only, the Jesses, not the Davids. ‘Well, dear father, how proud I am of you serving your country as a very gallant gentleman prepared to make even the supreme sacrifice! I only wish I were your age: how willingly would I buckle on my armour and fight those unspeakable Philistines! As it is, of course, I can’t be spared; I have to stay behind at the War Office and administrate for you lucky old men. What sacrifices I have made!’ David would sigh, when the old boys had gone off with a draft to the front, singing Tipperary: ‘There’s father and my Uncle Salmon, and both my grandfathers all on active service. I must put a card in the window about it.’

I thought of going back to France, but realized the absurdity of the notion. Since 1916, the fear of gas obsessed me: any unusual smell, even a sudden strong scent of flowers in a garden, was enough to send me trembling. And I couldn’t face the sound of heavy shelling now; the noise of a car back-firing would send me flat on my face, or running for cover.

We were all accustomed to the war-time view, that the sole qualification for peace-time employment would be a good record of service in the field, that we expected our scars and our commanding officers’ testimonials to get us whatever we wanted.

The Treaty of Versailles shocked me; it seemed destined to cause another war some day, yet nobody cared.