I felt David's death worse than any other since I had been in France, but it did not anger me as it did Siegfried. He was Acting Transport Officer and every evening now, when he came up with the rations, went out on patrol looking for Germans to kill. I just felt empty and lost.
One of the anthems that we used to sing in the Mess was: "He that shall endure to the end, shall be saved." The words repeated themselves in my head, like a charm, whenever things went wrong. "Though thousands languish and fall beside thee, And tens of thousands around thee perish. Yet still it shall not come nigh thee." And there was another bit: "To an inheritance incorruptible . . . Through faith unto salvation, Ready to be revealed at the last trump." For "trump" we always used to sing "crump." A crump was German five-point-nine shell, and "the last crump" would be the end of the War. Should we ever live to hear it burst safely behind us? I wondered whether I could endure to the end with faith unto salvation . . . My breaking point was near now, unless something happened to stave it off. Not that I felt frightened. I had never yet lost my head and turned tail through fright, and knew that I never would. Nor would the break-down come as insanity; I did not have it in me. It would be a general nervous collapse, with tears and twitchings and dirtied trousers; I had seen cases like that.
We were issued with a new gas-helmet, popularly known as "the goggle-eyed booger with the tit." It differed from the previous models. One breathed in through the nose from inside the helmet, and breathed out through a special valve held in the mouth; but I could not manage this. Boxing with an already broken nose had recently displaced the septum, which forced me to breathe through my mouth. In a gas-attack, I would be unable to use the helmet--the only type claimed to be proof against the newest German gas. The Battalion doctor advised a nose-operation as soon as possible.
I took his advice, and missed being with the First Battalion when the expected offensive started. Sixty per cent of my fellow-officers were killed in it. Scatter's dream of open warfare failed to materialize. He himself got very badly wounded. Of "A" Company choir, there is one survivor besides myself: C.D. Morgan, who had his thigh smashed, and was still in hospital some months after the War ended.
This excerpt is from Chapter 18 of the original edition of Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves, published by Jonathan Cape in 1929. Graves revised his memoir in 1957.
