Explore "Goodbye to all That" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THERE were about thirty instructors at the Harfleur 'Bull Ring', where newly-arrived drafts now went for technical instruction before going up the line. Most of my colleagues specialized on musketry, machine-guns, gas, or bombs. Having no specialist training, but only general experience, I taught troops trench relief and trench discipline in a model system of trenches. My principal other business was arms-drill. One day it rained, and the terrifying Major Currie, the Bull Ring commandant, suddenly ordered me to lecture in the big concert hall. 'You'll find three thousand men there waiting for you, Graves, and you're the only available officer with a loud enough voice to make himself heard. ' They were Canadians, so instead of giving my usual semi-facetious lecture on 'How to be Happy, Though in the Trenches', I paid them the compliment of telling the real story of Loos, and what a balls-up it had been, and why - more or less as it has been given here.
This was the only audience I have ever held for an hour with real attention. I expected Major Currie to be furious, because the principal object of the Bull Ring was to inculcate the offensive spirit; but he took it well and put several other concert-hall lectures on me after this.