Robert Graves

Robert Graves was so badly wounded during the Battle that his family was told he was dead.  In Goodbye to All That, he wrote one of the most enduring memoirs of the First World War and the Somme in particular. 

Graves obtained a Special Reserve commission in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in August 1914 and served in both the 2nd and 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers in 1915.  He preferred the 1st where he met another soldier-poet, Siegfried Sassoon.  In March 1916 Graves was with the 1st Battalion on the Somme near Fricourt.  After home leave and an operation in London, he did not return to the Somme until 14 July, this time with the 2nd Battalion.  They went into reserve north of Mametz Wood.  As the nights were cold, Graves collected greatcoats for his men from dead Germans.  The sight of one corpse inspired his poem, A Dead Boche.

On 20 July, acting as reserve to an attack by the 33rd Division on High Wood, the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers were positioned on a ridge to the east of Bazentin-le-Petit cemetery.  Coming under shell-fire, they fell back and Graves was badly wounded in eight places.  At a dressing station near Mametz Wood, it was expected he would die.  When he was discovered alive, he was sent to No.8 General Hospital in Rouen.  Confusing messages reached his family and his death was announced in the Times.  But when he arrived in London another announcement was placed retracting the first. Graves was demobilized in 1919 as a Major, aged only 23.

After the war, Graves emerged as one of the most original British poets of the twentieth century.  His First World War experiences continued to exercise a powerful influence on him until his death in Majorca in 1985.