Robert Graves 
Robert Graves and close friend Siegfried Sassoon served as Officers in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, though neither were Welshmen.(1) Graves also spent time with the Welsh Regiment and in ‘Good-bye to All That’ tells of reaching the trenches for the first time, under bombardment;
Instead of the usual music-hall songs they sung Welsh hymns, each man taking a part. The Welsh always sang when pretending not to be scared; it kept them steady…… a salvo of four shells whizzed suddenly over our heads. This broke up ‘Aberystwyth’ in the middle of a verse… (2)
Alfred Perceval Graves was an Inspector of Schools and celebrated Irish Poet, (3) his Mother, Amalie von Ranke, the great niece of historian Leopold von Ranken. On accepting his commission in 1914 Robert noted this would put right the ‘family balance’ with ‘ten members fighting on each side’.(4)
In July 1916 leading his men through a cemetery at the Somme, Captain Graves was wounded in the lung by a shell blast and not expected to ‘last the night’. His commanding officer wrote of his death and an obituary was printed in ‘The Times’ before he arrived back in England surviving a five-day journey without a change of bandages.(5)
Suffering from shell-shock he remained traumatised by the war throughout his life. After divorce from his first wife Nancy and the breakup of his affair, Graves left England for Mallorca with his second muse, Beryl.(6) Settling with his new family he continued to write publishing a total of 140 books including the famous I, Claudius, The White Goddess and The Greek Myths.(7)
IT'S A QUEER TIME by Robert Graves (extract)
It’s hard to know if you’re alive or dead
When steel and fire go roaring through your head.
One moment you’ll be crouching at your gun
Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun:
The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast -
No time to think - leave all - and off you go…
To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,
To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime -
Breathe no good-bye, but ho, for the Red West!
It’s a queer time.
You’re charging madly at them yelling ‘Fag!’
When somehow something gives and your feet drag.
You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain
And find… you’re digging tunnels through the hay
In the Big Barn, ‘cause it’s a rainy day.
Oh, springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!
You’re back in the old sailor suit again.
It’s a queer time.....
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Robert Graves in old age
Notes:
1. www.movehimintothesun.wordpress.com - Griffiths, G.M. (1 March 2011)
2. Graves, Robert, Goodbye to All That - An Autobiography, Jonathan Cape, London (1929)
4. Ed. Kendall, T, Poetry of the First World War, Oxford University Press (2017), page 192
5. Shute, Joe, (Mallorca), My father Robert Graves, the war poet who cheated death, The Telegraph (23 July 2016)
7. Ibid
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