1916 The poet Robert Graves (born Robert von Ranke) was among the first to enlist in the Royal Welch Fusiliers on the outbreak of the war to end wars, in August 1914, forgoing a scholarship at Oxford to do so.
He was commissioned and promptly saw active service in France. Graves proved a good soldier (his military experience is recalled in his autobiographical Good-bye to All That, 1929). He was promoted captain, and company commander, in 1915.
During this period in the trenches he befriended his fellow poet, and fellow fusilier, Siegfried Sassoon. At the Somme, on 20 July 1916 (not yet 21 years old), Graves was hit by shell shrapnel, sustaining serious internal injuries (Sassoon was wounded in the same battle). The field hospital where Graves was taken reported him dead and an obituary was printed in The Times. His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Crawshay, sent his parents the standard letter of condolence, along with their son’s private possessions, on 22 July:
I very much regret to have to write and tell you your son has died of wounds. He was very gallant, and was doing so well and is a great loss. He was hit by a shell and very badly wounded, and died on the way down to the base I believe. He was not in bad pain, and our doctor managed to get across and attend to him at once.
We have had a very hard time, and our casualties have been large. Believe me you have all our sympathy in your loss, and we have lost a very gallant soldier. Please write to me if I can tell you or do anything.
Graves in fact survived the wounds to see his obituary corrected (on 6 August) and his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier (1916), published (thanks largely to the indefatigable friend to poets, Edward Marsh). He wrote a poem on the subject of his death and resurrection, ‘Escape’. It records:
… but I was dead, an hour or more.
I woke when I’d already passed the door
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.
Although invalided out of the front line (his lungs never quite recovered), he was instrumental in getting a shell-shocked Sassoon treated at the progressive Craiglockhart War Hospital, under W.H.R. Rivers, near Edinburgh. Both Sassoon and Graves befriended Wilfred Owen (also at Craiglockhart), thus forming the most renowned nucleus of First World War poets (see also 30 July). Owen would not survive the war. Sassoon wrote little worthwhile poetry after it. Graves went on to lead a rich and fulfilling career in literature. The Craiglockhart episode is commemorated in Pat Barker’s award-winning ‘Regeneration’ trilogy of novels (1991–95).