Robert Graves, Goodbye to all that

[Mrguy123]

In Robert Grave's Goodbye to all that, I'm trying to figure out what made him keep going back to the war over and over again, seemed to me he hated the war but I guess he liked his battalion so much that is why he kept going back?

[Emil Miller]

In Robert Grave's Goodbye to all that, I'm trying to figure out what made him keep going back to the war over and over again, seemed to me he hated the war but I guess he liked his battalion so much that is why he kept going back?

Well I don't think he went back any more than his leave quota would have allowed, but one of the things that struck me about the book was how downbeat everything appeared in England, with a large part of the population dressed in black for soldiers killed in action, and how he felt more at home in the trenches where the cameraderie of the troops stood in marked contrast to the all-pervading sadness at home.

[kasie]

As a serving officer in wartime, Graves would not have had much option about returning to the front line. Any soldier who opted out was either accused of desertion for which the penelty was the firing squad or was considered insane and placed in a mental hospital. Public opinion was much in line with the military stance: understanding of shell shock, battle fatigue, post-traumatic stress, was a long way in the future.

Compare the experience of Siegfried Sassoon - he was appalled by conditions in the trenches and published his opinions. As a decorated war hero, he was diagnosed as mad rather than treacherous, and spent a period at a remote institution being 'treated' for shell shock: he met Wilfred Owen there and encouraged him to write more poetry. Both men returned to the Front with a renewed determination to care for their men. Owen was killed days before the war ended; Sassoon survived but the experience took its toll on his creativity.

[dafydd manton]

It is a strange fact but those who serve, and I have been there, don't do so for their country, or for some ridiculous ideal, but eventually, you finish up serving for your friends or your men. Going back is not a choice, it is a compulsion, and therefore something over which you have little or no control. You do it because of them, not for any other reason. I can sympathise with Graves, who was branded as a foreigner by virtue of his middle name of Von Ranke, because he had no national allegiance, just a strong sense of belonging to the Royal Welch.