Friday, August 21, 2009
Goodbye to All That- Robert Graves
This is Robert Graves's autobiography and one of the most humorous books about the first world war that I have read. It tells of his pre-war years and of his life in the trenches watching his friends dying around him. Indeed at one point he is commanding company 'B' -a company of 5 men. It also tells of the adaptations he has to make to peace and living with a wife and two chldren. The great thing about this book is that you actually feel his cynically humorous outlook at the beginning of the war and his almost depressive sadness towards the end.
One particularly poignant episode is when the armistice day was declared and he remembers all his freinds who have died. The news sent me out walking alone along the dyke above the marshes of Rhuddlan (an ancient battlefield, the Flodden of Wales), cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead.
Siegfried's famous poem celebrating the armistice began:
Everybody suuddenly burst out singing,
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find freedom...
But 'everybody' did not include me.
However the book has some very funny moments.
.A great read.
Author: Robert Graves
publisher: Pengu
in Autobiography
