EnglishOpenAccess  

 Experience of War

 home

index 
 
extract from  Goodbye to All That: Robert Graves

   In December, I attended a medical board; they sounded my chest and asked how I was feeling.  The president wanted to know whether I wanted a few months more home-service.  I said:' No, sir, I should be much obliged if you would pass me fit for service overseas.'  In January I got my sailing orders.
  I went back an old soldier, as my kit and baggage proved.  I had reduced the original Christmas-tree to a pocket-torch with a fourteen-day battery, and a pair of insulated wire-cutters strong enough to cut German wire (the ordinary Army issue would cut only British wire).  Instead of a haversack, I brought a pack like the ones carried by the men, but lighter and waterproof.  I had lost my revolver when wounded and not bought another; a rifle and bayonet could always be got from the battalion.  (Not carrying rifle and bayonet made officers conspicuous during an attack; in most divisions now they carried them; and also wore trousers rolled down their puttees, like then men, instead of riding-breeches - because the Germans had learned to recognize officers by their thin knees.)  The heavy blankets I had brought out before were now replaced by an eiderdown sleeping-bag in an oiled-silk cover.  I also took a Shakespeare and a Bible, both printed on India paper, a Catullus and a Lucretius in Latin; and two light-weighted folding canvas arm-chairs - one as a present for Yates, the quartermaster, the other for myself.  I wore a very thick whip-cord tunic, with a neat patch above the second button and another between the shoulders - my only salvage from the last time out, except for the reasonably waterproof pair of ski-ing boots, in which also I had been killed - my breeches had been cut off me in hospital.
  I commanded a draft of ten young officers.  Young officers, at this period, were expected, as someone has noted in his war-memoirs, to be roistering blades over wine and women.  These ten did their best.  Three of them got venereal disease at the Rouen Blue Lamp.  They were strictly brought-up Welsh boys of the professional classes, had never hitherto visited a brothel, and knew nothing about prophylactics.  One of them shared a hut with me.  He came in very late and very drunk one night, from the Drapeau Blanc, woke me up and began telling me about his experiences.  'I never knew before,' he said, 'what a wonderful thing sex is!'
  I said irritably, and in some disgust:' The Drapeau Blanc?  Then I hope to God you washed yourself.'
  He was very Welsh, and on his dignity.  'What do you mean, captain?  I did wass my fa-ace and ha-ands.'
  There were no restraints in France; these boys had money to spend and knew that they stood a good chance of being killed within a few weeks anyhow.  They did not want to die virgins.  The Drapeau Blanc saved the life of scores by incapacitating them for future trench service.  Base venereal hospitals were always crowded.  The troops took a lewd delight in exaggerating the proportion of army chaplains to combatant officers treated there. 
  At the Bull Ring [the British army training centre at Etaples], the instructors were full of bullet-and-bayonet enthusiasm, with which they tried to infect the drafts.  The drafts consisted, for the most part, either of forcibly enlisted men, or wounded men returning; and at this dead season of the year could hardly be expected to feel enthusiastic on their arrival.  The training principles had recently been revised.  Infantry Training, 1914 laid it down politely that the soldier's ultimate aim was to put out of action or render ineffective the armed forces of the enemy.  The War Office no longer considered this statement direct enough for a war of attrition.  Troops learned instead that they must HATE the Germans, and KILL as many of them as possible.  In bayonet-practice, the men had to make horrible grimaces and utter blood-curdling yells as they charged.  The instructors' faces were set in a permanent ghastly grin.  'Hurt him, now!  In at the belly!  Tear his guts out!'  they would scream, as the men charged the dummies.  'Now that upper swing at his privates with the butt.  Ruin his chances for life!  No more little Fritzes!...Naaoh!  Anyone would think that you loved the bloody swine, patting and stroking 'em like that!  BITE HIM, I SAY!  STICK YOUR TEETH IN HIM AND WORRY HIM!  EAT HIS HEART OUT!'
  Once more I felt glad to be sent up to the trenches.