Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

THE president of the Osborne medical board had been right: I should not have been back on duty. The training at the Third Battalion camp was intensive, and being given command of a trained-men company I did not get enough rest. I realized how bad my nerves were when one day, marching through the streets of Litherland on a battalion route-march, I saw three workmen in gas-masks beside an open man-hole, bending over a corpse which they had just hauled up from a sewer. His clothes were sodden and stinking; face and hands, yellow. Waste chemicals from the munitions factory had got into the sewage system and gassed him when he went down to inspect. My company did not pause in its march, and I had only a glimpse of the group; but it reminded me so strongly of France that, but for the band-music, I should have fainted.

The colonel detailed me as member of a court-martial on a civilian alleged to have enlisted under the Derby Scheme, but not to have presented himself when his class was called to the colours. I tried to feel sympathetic with the nasty-looking little man, who closely resembled a rabbit, but found it difficult, even when he proved never to have enlisted. His solicitor handed us a letter from a corporal in France, explaining that he had enlisted in the rabbit's name while on leave, because the rabbit had recently been rabbiting with his wife. This the rabbit denied; but he showed that the colour of his eyes recorded on the enlistment-form was blue, while his own were rabbit-brown, so he seemed to have a case. But a further question arose: why had he not enlisted under the Military Service Act, if he was a fit rabbit? He claimed to be starred, having done responsible work in a munitions factory for the necessary length of time before the Military Service Act became law.