Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

I FOUND the Second Battalion near Bouchavesnes on the Somme, but a very different Second Battalion. No riding-school, no battalion mess, no Quetta manners, no regular officers, except for a couple of newly arrived Sandhurst boys. I was more warmly welcomed this time; my supposed spying activities had been forgotten. But the day before I reported, Colonel Crawshay had been wounded while out in No Man's Land inspecting the battalion wire: shot in the thigh by one of the 'rotten crowd' of his letter, who mistook him for a German and fired without challenging. He has been in and out of nursing homes ever since.

Doctor Dunn asked me with kindly disapproval what I meant by returning so soon. I said: 'I couldn't stand England any longer. ' He told the acting C. O. that I was, in his opinion, unfit for trench service, so I took command of the headquarter company and went to live with transport, back at Frises, where the Somme made a bend. My company consisted of regimental clerks, cooks, tailors, shoemakers, pioneers, transport men, and so on, who in a break-through could turn riflemen and be used as a combatant force, as at the First Battle of Ypres. We lived in dug-outs, close to the river, which was frozen over completely but for a narrow stretch of fast-running water in the middle. I have never been so cold in all my life. I used to go up to the trenches every night with the rations, Yates being sick; it was about a twelve-mile walk there and back.