Good-bye to all that

Misspelled words have been corrected. These are identified by a ♦ symbol in the text. The change description is shown immediately below the paragraph or section in which the cor...

I am glad in a way that my father was a poet. This at least saved me from any false reverence of poets, and his work was never an oppression to me. I am even very pleased when I...

My father said it was out of date. Also I was made to do mental arithmetic to a metronome. I once wet myself for nervousness at this torture. So I went to the lowest class of Ki...

The headmaster who caned me on the hand was a lover of German culture, and impressed this feeling on the school, so that it was to my credit that I could speak German and had be...

The most unfortunate disability of all was that my name appeared on the school list as ‘R. von R. Graves.’ I had only known hitherto that my second name was Ranke; the ‘von,’ di...

I went to the changing-room for my coat, and stout Sergeant Harris, the boxing instructor, said: ‘Look here, Mr. Graves, why don’t you put down your name for the middle-weight c...

George was wasted at Charterhouse, where, in my time at least, he was generally despised by the boys because he was neither a disciplinarian nor interested in cricket or footbal...

The adjutant, an East Lancashire lieutenant, by name Deane. The day after war was declared a German armed cruiser had held up the neutral liner in which he was sailing home from...

The Army Council, which is usually composed of cavalry, engineer, and artillery generals, with the infantry hardly represented, had never encouraged regimental peculiarities, an...

The trench was wet and slippery. The guide was giving hoarse directions all the time. ‘Hole right.’ ‘Wire high.’ ‘Wire low.’ ‘Deep place here, sir.’ ‘Wire low.’ I had never been...

22_nd May_.—A colossal bombardment by the French at Souchez, a few miles away—continuous roar of artillery, coloured flares, shells bursting all along the ridge by Notre Dame de...

I saw a ghost at Béthune. He was a man called Private Challoner who had been at Lancaster with me and again in F company at Wrexham. When he went out with a draft to join the Fi...

Besides, I had worked it out like this. The best way of lasting the war out was to get wounded. The best time to get wounded was at night and in the open, because a wound in a v...

On September 19th we relieved the Middlesex at Cambrin, and it was said that these were the trenches from which we were to attack. The preliminary bombardment had already starte...

It was at this point that the Royal Welch Fusiliers came up in support. Maison Rouge Alley was a nightmare; the Germans were shelling it with five-nines bursting with a black sm...

She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to go away as soon as their money was spent. She said that the clause about t...

Early in December the rumour came that we were going for divisional training to the back areas. I would not believe it, having heard stories of this kind too often, and was surp...

Patriotism. There was no patriotism in the trenches. It was too remote a sentiment, and rejected as fit only for civilians. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be tol...

I rejoined the Third Battalion at Litherland, near Liverpool, where it had been shifted from Wrexham as part of the Mersey defence force; I liked the Third Battalion. The senior...

It was a bright moonlight night. My way to the strong-point on the right took me along the Bazentin-High Wood road. A German sergeant-major, wearing a pack and full equipment, w...

I never saw the biographical details supplied by my father; they might have been helpful to me here. Some letters written to me in France were returned to him as my next-of-kin....

I was posted to the Second Battalion again. I found it near Bouchavesnes on the Somme. It was a very different Second Battalion. No riding-school, no battalion-mess, no Quetta m...

By this time the War Office had stopped the privilege that officers had enjoyed, after coming out of hospital, of going to their own homes for convalescence. It was found that m...

The general consulted not God but the War Office, and the War Office was persuaded not to press the matter as a disciplinary case, but to give Siegfried a medical board. Morgan...

I grew tired of this idleness and arranged to be transferred to the Sixteenth Officer Cadet Battalion in another part of the same camp. It was the same sort of work that I had d...

The reaction against military discipline between the Armistice and the signing of peace delighted Siegfried and myself. Siegfried had taken a prominent part in the General Elect...

Another poet on Boar’s Hill was Robert Nichols, still another neurasthenic ex-soldier, with his flame-opal ring, his wide-brimmed hat, his flapping arms and ‘mournful grandeur’...

From Dorchester we bicycled to Tiverton in Devonshire, where Nancy’s old nurse kept a fancy-goods shop. Nancy helped her dress the shop-window and advised her about framing the...

I was so busy that I had no time to be ill myself. Nancy begged me not to talk about the war in her hearing, and I was ready to forget about it. The villagers called me ‘The Cap...

Other friends were not numerous. Edith Sitwell was one of them. It was a surprise, after reading her poems, to find her gentle, domesticated, and even devout. When she came to s...

I did not pay an official call at the Residency at first, though my brother urged it as etiquette; I decided not to until I had seen how things were at the University. I had not...

Our children were a great anxiety. They had to drink boiled milk and boiled water and be watched all the time to prevent them from taking off their topees and blue veils. Then t...