Goodbye to All That (Penguin Modern Classics)

Author:Robert Graves [Graves, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 0141184590
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 1957-01-01T12:00:00+00:00

Siegfried had not yet been in the trenches. I told him, in my old-soldier manner, that he would soon change his style.

That night, the whole battalion went up to work on a new defence scheme at Festubert. Festubert had been a nightmare ever since the first fighting there in 1914 when the inmates of its lunatic asylum, caught between two fires, broke out and ran all over the countryside. The British trench line, which crossed a stretch of ground marked on the map as ‘Marsh, sometimes dry in the summer’, consisted of islands of high-command trench, with no communication between them except at night. The battalion had been nearly wiped out here six months previously. We were set to build up a strong reserve line, and came night after night. The temperature being ten degrees below zero, and the ground frozen a foot deep, we managed only to raise some two hundred yards of trench about knee-high, at the cost of several men wounded by casual shot skimming the trench in front of us. Other troops resumed work when the thaw came and built a thick, seven-foot-high ramp which, little by little, sank down into the marsh, and in the end was completely engulfed.

When I left the Second Battalion, the adjutant let me take my admirable servant, Private Fahy (known as ‘Tottie Fay’, after the actress), with me. Tottie, a reservist from Birmingham, had been called up when war broke out, and fought with the Second Battalion ever since. By trade a silversmith, he had recently gone on leave, and brought me back a gift cigarette-case, all his own work, engraved with my name. On arrival at the First Battalion, however, he met one Sergeant Dickens. They had been boozing chums in India seven or eight years ago, and joyfully celebrated the reunion. The next morning I was surprised and annoyed to find my buttons unpolished and only cold water for shaving; it made me late for breakfast. I could get no news of Tottie, but on my way to rifle inspection at nine o’clock at the company billet, noticed Field Punishment No. 1 being carried out in a corner of the farmyard. Tottie had just been awarded twenty-eight days of it for ‘drunkenness in the field’, and stood spread-eagled to the wheel of a company limber, tied by the ankles and wrists in the form of an X. He was obliged to stay in this position – ‘Crucifixion’ they called it – for several hours every day so long as the battalion remained in billets, and then again after the next spell of trenches. I shall never forget the look that my quiet, respectful, devoted Tottie gave me. He wanted to tell me that he regretted having let me down, and his immediate reaction was an attempt to salute. I could see him vainly trying to lift his hand to his forehead, and bring his heels together. The battalion police-sergeant, a fierce-looking man, had just finished knotting him up when I arrived.

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