Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a writer of fiction, poetry, essays and criticism

He enlisted in the Royal Welch Fusiliers when war was declared in 1914.

The following is an extract taken from his autobiography "Goodbye to all that" which is being serialized in the Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan


PURPLE PATCH: Trench-mortars —Robert Graves

In March I rejoined the First Battalion on the Somme. It was the primrose season. We went in and out of the Fricourt trenches, with billets at Morlancourt, a country village still untouched by shell-fire. (Later it got knocked to pieces; the Australians and the Germans captured and recaptured it from each other several times, until only the site remained.) “A” Company Headquarters were a farmhouse kitchen, where we slept in our valises on the red-brick floor. An old lady and her daughter stayed to safeguard their possessions. The old lady was senile and paralysed; almost all she could do was to shake her head and say: “Triste, la guerre!” We called her “Triste la Guerre.” The daughter used to carry her about in her arms.

At Fricourt, the trenches were cut in chalk, which we found more tolerable in wet weather than La Bassée clay. The Division gave us a brigade frontage where the lines came closer to each other than at any other point for miles. The British had only recently extended their line down to the Somme, and the French had been content, as they usually were, unless definitely contemplating a battle, to be at peace with the Germans and not dig in too near. But here a slight ridge occurred, and neither side could afford to let the other hold the crest, so they shared it, after a prolonged dispute. This area was used by both the Germans and ourselves as an experimental station for the new types of bombs and grenades. The trenches were wide and tumbledown, too shallow in many places, and without sufficient traverses. The French had left relics both of their nonchalance — corpses buried too near the surface; and of their love of security — a number of deep though lousy dug-outs. We busied ourselves raising the front-line parapet and building traverses to limit the damage of the trench-mortar shells that fell continually. Every night not only the companies in the front line, but both support companies, kept hard at work all the time. It was an even worse place than Cuinchy for rats; they scuttled about “A” Company Mess at meal-time. We always ate with revolvers beside our plates, and punctuated our conversation with sudden volleys at a rat rummaging at somebody’s valise or crawling along the timber support of the roof above our heads. “A” Company officers were gay. We had all been in our school choirs (except Edmund Dadd, who sang like a crow) and used to chant anthems and bits of cantatas whenever things went well. Edmund insisted on taking his part.

At dinner one day a Welsh boy came rushing in, hysterical from terror. He shouted to Richardson: ‘Sirr, Sirr, there is a trenss-mortar in my dug-out!”

His sing-song Welsh made us all hoot with laughter. “Cheer up, 33 Williams,” Richardson said, “how did a big thing like a trench-mortar happen to occur in your dugout?”

But 33 Williams could not explain. He went on again and again: “Sirr, Sirr, there is a trenss-mortar in my dug-out!”

Edmund Dadd went off to investigate. He reported that a mortar shell had fallen into the trench, bounced down the dug-out steps, exploded and killed five men. 33 Williams, the only survivor, had been lying asleep, protected by the body of another man.

Our greatest trial was the German canister — a two-gallon drum with a cylinder inside containing about two pounds of an explosive called ammonal that looked like salmon paste, smelled like marzipan and, when it went off, sounded like the Day of Judgement. The hollow around the cylinder contained scrap metal, apparently collected by French villagers behind the German lines: rusty nails, fragments of British and French shells, spent bullets, and the screws, nuts and bolts that heavy lorries leave behind on the road. We dissected one unexploded canister, and found in it, among other things, the cogwheels of a clock and half a set of false teeth. The canister could easily be heard approaching and looked harmless in the air, but its shock was as shattering as the very heaviest shell. It would blow in any but the very deepest dug-outs; and the false teeth, rusty nails, cog-wheels, and so on, went flying all over the place. We could not agree how the Germans fired a weapon of that size. The problem remained unsolved until July 1st, when the Battalion attacked from these same trenches and found a long wooden cannon buried in the earth and discharged with a time-fuse. The crew offered to surrender, but our men had sworn for months to get them.

One evening (near “Trafalgar Square,” should any of my readers remember that trench-junction), Richardson, David Thomas and I met Pritchard and the Adjutant. We stopped to talk. Richardson complained what a devil of a place this was for trench-mortars.

“That’s where I come in,” said Pritchard. As Battalion Trench-Mortar Officer he had just been given two Stokes mortar-guns. “They’re beauties,” Pritchard went on. “I’ve been trying them out, and tomorrow I’m going to get some of my own back. I can put four or five shells in the air at once.”

“About time, too,” the Adjutant said. “We’ve had three hundred casualties in the last month here. It doesn’t seem so many as that because, curiously enough, none of them have been officers. In fact, we’ve had about five hundred casualties in the ranks since Loos, and not a single officer.”

Then he suddenly realised that his words were unlucky.

“Touch wood!” David cried. Everybody jumped to touch wood, but it was a French trench and unriveted. I pulled a pencil out of my pocket; that was wood enough for me.

Richardson said: “I’m not superstitious, anyway.”