Goodbye to All That

Graves dedicates this chapter to discussing the history and prestige of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the regiment he chose "quite blindly" (82). The Royal Welch has received "twenty-nine battle-honours" (82), a number almost unequalled among similarly-sized regiments. The Royal Welch served in "the four hardest-fought victories of the British Army" (83), including during the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars.

In addition to keeping the archaic spelling of “Welsh” to distinguish themselves from "the modern North Wales of chapels, Liberalism[…]and the tourist trade" (86), the Royal Welch also wear a uniform decoration called a flash. The flash, a fan of five black ribbons worn at top of the jacket's back, replaced the ponytail once worn by the army. Though the Army Council worried the flash made "a distinctive mark for enemy snipers" (85), the Royal Welch continued to wear it. 

During the war, the Royal Welch adds many battalions. The Special Reserve officers, like Graves, receive assurance of their good fortune to serve with "one of the other of the line battalions" (88), which are more established. During peacetime, the Special Reserves would have had to distinguish themselves at military college but also "possess a guaranteed independent income" (88) that allowed them to live a life of leisure. The officers also learn that they should not expect "to be recommended for Orders or decorations" (88), as the Royal Welch believes accolades should be "representative awards for the whole Regiment" (88), reserved for "professional soldiers" (88) seeking promotion. Graves assures the reader that he never "performed any feat" (89) for which he would have been decorated during his service in France. 

Graves and five other Royal Welch officers arrive at a base called Harfleur near Le Havre, France. The officers find themselves posted to the Welsh Regiment rather than the Royal Welch, to their dismay. Unlike the Royal Welch, the Welsh Regiment has a reputation for being "rough and tough" (91). Graves recalls that, with demand for soldiers so high, the only people to send are "recruits of the Spring 1915 class" (92) who are either "over-age or under-age" (92) and have very little military training.

Graves, the officers, and the other soldiers take a train to Béthune, where they arrive in the evening "hungry, cold, and dirty" (94). A man wearing a Welsh cap-badge appears at the station to guide the troops to the Battalion, stationed in the Cambrin trenches. The Welshmen in the group, "pretending not to be scared" (94), begin singing as they march towards the "flare-lights curving over the distant trenches" (94). They hear gunfire and shells flying over their heads.

In the ruined village of Cambrin, the troops enter a former pharmacy to receive their respirators—the first of their kind. They eat a crude meal and enter the trenches through a stand of trees. Using his flashlight, Graves sees "hundreds of field mice and frogs" (95) have fallen into the trench with no way to get out of it. The troops' guide gives "hoarse directions" (96) to avoid fallen telephone wires and mud pits.

Graves and the other officers reach Battalion Headquarters, where the Colonel in command offers them whiskey. The Headquarters, recently taken from the French, have a "local armistice with the Germans opposite" (97) and, hence, are "unusually comfortable" (97) and decently furnished. The Adjutant assigns Graves to C Company; Captain Dunn is his commander. Walking to C Company, Graves passes a group of Welshmen "huddled over a brazier" (97), wearing waterproof caps. None of the men salute him. A stretcher passes them, bearing the body of a man who threw a "percussion bomb" (98) towards the German side only to have it bounce back and hit his face.

Graves reaches C Company Headquarters and finds, to his surprise, Captain Dunn to be "two months younger" (98) than himself. Dunn has a good reputation as an "only survivor" (98) of recent massacres. Dunn greets Graves cheerfully and asks how long the War will last and who is winning. Graves does his best to fill Dunn in with the information he has from England. Graves asks Dunn what they know about trenches and Dunn says they "don't know as much about trenches as the French do" (99), nor the Germans, to whom Dunn refers as "Fritz" (99). Dunn explains that they only recently came to see the trenches as "places to live in" (99) rather than "temporary inconveniences" (99). He explains the Battalion's daily schedule and compliments the Welshmen's work ethic.

Dunn tells Graves to have a nap in the Headquarters until his patrol begins at 1 a.m. When roused at that time, Dunn gives Graves a "rocket-pistol and a few flares" (101) but advises Graves to use them sparingly. Dunn explains that the Germans have as many flares as they want. Dunn then shows Graves the Battalion's line, which stretches for 800 yards. Each company holds a line of about 200 yards. Dunn introduces Graves to the platoon sergeants, particularly Sergeant Eastmond, then goes back to sleep.

Graves begins his rounds, familiarizing himself with the trench geography and checking on the sentries stationed in two-hour shifts at the traverses. As Graves stands beside a sentry named Beaumont, the Germans send a flare up and Graves moves "instinctively" (102). Beaumont tells Graves it's bad to move; rather, Graves should keep still, so the Germans can't spot him.

At the first sign of dawn, Graves passes the word along the line for C Company to "stand-to arms" (103). The soldiers pass the word in hoarse whispers and men "tumble out with their rifles in their hands" (103). On his way to C Company Headquarters, Graves passes a man lying on his face in a machine-gun shelter. Graves orders him to stand-to but the man doesn't respond. The machine-gunner tells Graves that the man is dead by suicide, having shot himself in the face the night before. When two officers arrive to take the man's body away, they tell Graves they'll write the "usual sort of letter" (103) to the man's family, telling them he "died a soldier's death" (103) and make no mention of the suicide.

At breakfast, Graves uses a periscope to look at the German trenches and the no-man's-land in-between. Graves sees wisps of smoke rising from the Germans’ morning breakfast fires and notes the wildflowers and ruined villages between their trenches. Graves gains favor with his platoon by making a joke about one of the popular "idiotic songs of Wales" (104). At breakfast, Graves finds the respectful comradery of the senior and junior officers refreshing. Dunn fills Graves in on the men in his platoon: which of them are "trustworthy and which had to be watched" (105). Just then, a soldier rushes into the Headquarters yelling about gas. Dunn asks for his respirator and another pot of marmalade. The so-called gas turns out to be nothing more than smoke from the Germans' breakfast blowing into the English trenches. 

In this chapter, Graves employs fragments of letters he wrote in the spring and summer of 1915. C Company arrives at a billet, or civilian's home, used to house soldiers, in the mining town of La Bourse. Graves’s men have sore feet from wearing the same socks and boots for a week. As the men march through the "cobbled roads" (107) of La Bourse with difficulty, a staff-officer in a Rolls-Royce drives by and curses them "for bad-march discipline" (107). Graves wants to throw something at the man.

The next night, Graves sweats in his feather bed as the nearby town of Souchez gets bombarded by the Germans. Graves’s men sleep in "a barn full of straw" (107). Their rifles and clothes are in disrepair; Graves receives word they can't be replaced "until they get much worse" (107).

The next day, the men have company drill. In the evening, Graves oversees a work-party digging a second-line trench for defense. Graves writes about "the amount of waste that goes on in the trenches" (109), explaining that men use ration biscuits for kindling and will sometimes fire their machine-guns "at no particular target" (110) to boil the water that cools the guns.

As C Company prepares to return to the trenches, Graves’s men start talking about "getting a 'cushy' one to send them back to 'Blitey'" (110), a 'cushy one' being a non-fatal-though-serious injury and 'Blitey' being Hindustani for “home.”Graves’s servant, Fry, tells Graves about two men who tried to get a cushy by being intentionally injured, but got themselves killed in the process. Only twelve men remain in C Company from the original assignment. Of them, all but Beaumont work transport. The soldiers all look forward to battle because it gives them a greater chance of getting a cushy than does trench warfare.

C Company gets assigned to the trenches at Cuinchy. The trenches are made of brick stacks. Graves explains that they have no ammunition "to equal the German sausage mortar-bomb" (112). The men have come to know rifle-fire versus mortars versus "machine-gun fire at the next company to [them]" (112) by sound. After a night of heavy German fire, a sanitary-man's corpse lays on the fire-step with one arm outstretched, waiting to be taken to the cemetery. As the stretcher carries his body, soldiers "joke as they push it out of the way to get by" (113) or grab the dead man's outstretched hand.

After Cuinchy, C Company billets in Béthune. The town is still mostly intact, with a cake-shop, hotel, and theatre. However, the trenches near Béthune are far worse than Cambrin. At Béthune, C Company suffers seventeen casualties "from bombs and grenades" (114) in one night. The next day, Graves walks along the trench and finds a group of men bending over a wounded man, making "a snoring noise mixed with animal groans" (114). Graves sees the man's brains spilling out of his head and realizes that this situation cannot make his normally-jovial company joke. Graves finds out that Beaumont, the sentry Graves met on his first night, has been killed by a German bomb.

After leaving Béthune, Graves and C Company arrive at Vermelles, a town in which "not a single house has remained undamaged" (115). In the morning, the men find a deserted garden area filled with red cabbages, flowers, and currant bushes. Eating the currants, Graves spots C Company’s sergeant-major. The sergeant-major salutes Graves and they both stop eating, as the sergeant-major's rank prevents him from eating "in the presence of an officer" (115). Graves cannot understand why he, the senior officer, has stopped eating.

That afternoon, the men have a cricket match of officers versus sergeants. They use a "bit of rafter" (116) as the bat, a rag tied with string as the ball, and a "parrot cage with the clean, dry corpse of a parrot inside" (116) as the wicket. Machine-gun fire breaks up the match, though it's aimed at an English airplane, not the men. Later, Graves and the other officers spend some time target-shooting with their revolvers. Jenkins, one of the officers, brings a "glass case full of artificial fruits and flowers" (116) out of one of the houses and the men begin shooting at it. Jenkins explains that his aunt had one of these at her house and he has always wanted to shoot it. Everyone misses the target and Jenkins says, "it must be bewitched" (117). One of the officers delivers the cabinet's "coup de grace from close quarters" (117).

One day in Vermelles, Jenkins and Graves go explore "an old Norman church" (117) nearly destroyed by the battles. Graves finds a piece of stained glass near the altar and gives it to Jenkins as a "souvenir" (117). Some of the Munsters, the Irish Catholic division of the Welsh Regiment, tell Jenkins it's "sacrilegious" for them to take it out of the church. Graves writes that Jenkins gets killed soon after this incident. 

Early summer brings "new types of bombs and trench-mortars, heavier shelling, improved gas-masks and a general tightening up of discipline" (119). Graves remains with the Welsh Regiment in the trenches at Cambrin and Cuinchy and develops "the pessimism of the First Division" (119). The pessimism turns into superstition and Graves begins to see "signs of the most trivial nature" (119). For example, Graves’s second sergeant in C Company tells Graves that his predecessor rightly predicted his own death. A few days later, Graves walks the Cambrin trench then suddenly falls flat on his face. A second later, Graves hears a "whizz-bang" (120), or a light shell, hitting the trench wall where his head had been. Graves estimates that he "must have reacted almost simultaneously with the explosion of the gun" (120) but can't understand how or why. Around this time, Graves also sees the ghost of a man with whom he served at Lancaster and Wrexham. The man had died in May but, when alive, had told Graves he would meet him "again in France" (120).

Graves, who has kept up letter correspondence with Dick, his romantic interest from Charterhouse, receives a letter from his cousin with bad news about Dick. Graves’s cousin says Dick is "not at all the innocent fellow" (121) Graves took him for though Graves, knowing his cousin has a grudge against Dick, disbelieves the letter. Graves writes to Dick about the news he's received and Dick denies it, saying he's had a feud with Graves’s cousin, which will end shortly.

At the end of July, Graves and Robertson, a 42-year-old Royal Welch officer, get called to "proceed to the Laventie sector" (122), to join the Second Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Graves and Robertson agree to make the seventeen-mile journey as leisurely as possible. They miss their first train and spend the day at the Hotel de la France, where they hope to see the Prince of Wales, a frequent visitor. Graves and Robertson stay the night at the hotel then take a train to a garden area near Laventie. From there, the men take a mess-cart to Battalion Headquarters in Laventie, arriving a full fifty-four hours after leaving Béthune.

Graves and Robertson receive a less-than-warm welcome by the Adjutant after telling him that they are "Third Battalion officers posted to the Regiment" (124). Later, a second-lieutenant, Hilary Drake-Brockman, of Graves’s A Company, tells him that the Royal Welch of this battalion follow "the peacetime custom of taking no notice of newly-joined officers" (124). Brockman advises Graves not to tell anyone of his Special Reservist status, as the senior officers will resent his "short service" (125). Brockman also explains a few particulars of this battalion's customs. The officers who can't "ride like angels" (126) must attend horseback-riding school every afternoon. Also, Brockman claims, the "Battalion thinks it's still in India" (126), and thus all soldiers must wear shorts and the men treat "the French civilians just like 'niggers'" (126). Graves calls the behavior childish but Brockman insists he'd rather "be with this battalion than with any other" (126), as they've suffered so few casualties.

Graves heads to eat with the Battalion, rather than his company—a vestige of peacetime practices for the Battalion. He greets the senior officers but receives no reply. Graves joins the other officers in a "ball-room with mirrors and a decorated ceiling" (128), and sits at the end of a long table across from the Adjutant, the Colonel, and Buzz Off, the second-in-command. Robertson asks for whiskey and learns that "young officers" (128) can’t drink whiskey. Buzz Off glares at Robertson and Graves, asking the Adjutant who they are. Buzz Off ignores Robertson's introduction of himself and asks Graves why he's wearing his stars on his shoulder, instead of his sleeve. Graves explains that's the way the Welsh Regiment wear them and he'd assumed "it was the same everywhere in France" (128). Buzz Off tells Graves to get his uniform fixed at the master-tailor. Graves curses Buzz Off under his breath.

That night, Graves goes to the trenches. The trenches at Levantie are only three-feet deep because of the groundwater but have parapets and paradoses built up to a man's height. Graves, who has never ventured into No-Man's Land, receives an order to "see whether a German sap-head" (129), or listening post in No-Man's Land, is occupied or not. Graves and a Sergeant Townsend crawl out into No-Man's Land, wearing socks over their knees. Graves touches "the slimy body of an old corpse" (130) in the dark and recoils. Graves and Townsend reach the sap-head and find it unmanned. They find a wicker basket with "something large and sooth and round" (130) inside it and bring this back with them to the trench. In the light, they find it’s a glass container filled with "some pale-yellow liquid" (130). Graves receives praise from the Colonel for having courage.

Graves, finding that "personal courage" (131) is the only thing respected in young officers, begins going on patrol in No-Man's Land more often. Graves also estimates that getting wounded is the only way he will last the War. He estimates being wounded on "night patrol in a quiet sector" (131) by "rifle-fire more or less unaimed" (131) will likely cause a non-fatal wound. On patrol, officers hope to bring back information about the regiment and division of the German troops opposite them. To do this, the officers must strip the corpses in No-Man's Land of their badges. Graves explains the risks Royal Welch soldiers will take, concluding that actions with "some wider object than merely reducing the enemy's manpower" (132), such as killing a sniper, have the greatest risk and reward. The Royal Welch also try to capture wounded Germans as prisoners-of-war.

The Royal Welch, unlike the Welsh Regiment, think themselves "better trench fighters than the Germans" (133). As soon as they arrive at a trench, the Royal Welch try to locate as many German snipers, machine-guns, and patrols as they can, then take them out one-by-one. The Germans, however, send snipers to the same position as replacements for those killed. Graves thinks they "regarded their loss as an accident" (134). The Royal Welch also have the advantage of facing east, so that at dawn, the sun exposes the Germans while the Royal Welch remain invisible to them.

After about three weeks at Levantie, Graves moves back to Béthune along with the entire Nineteenth Brigade. In the Cuinchy brick-stacks trenches, the Germans start sending messages to the Royal Welch "in undetonated rifle-grenades" (137). The messages have friendly tones, sometimes inviting the soldiers over "to a good German dinner tonight with beer (ale) and cakes" (137). The Germans also send over German newspapers with news about the war, though Graves concludes that the English soldiers don't care "about the origins of the War" (137).

One night, Graves goes out on patrol to investigate "suspicious sounds" (138) on the side of the tow-path. Graves, frightened, goes out with a sergeant and finds a group of Germans "digging a trench ahead of their front line" (139). Graves and the sergeant come close enough to a German soldier resting on his back, "humming a tune" (139), that Graves could kill him. The sergeant tries to hand Graves his revolver but Graves refuses it. He and the sergeant return to the English trench and reveal the Germans' location to the machine-gunners. They take aim and shell the area, as Graves hears the cries of "the probable casualties" (139). Buzz Off, on hearing of Graves’s refusal to shoot the German soldier, accuses him of having "cold feet" (139).

One night, Graves receives orders from Divisional Headquarters to shout across No-Man's Land, trying to "make the enemy take part in a conversation" (139). The Royal Welch hope to "find out how strongly the German front trenches" (139) are staffed at night. One of the German-speaking officers in the company yells to the Germans, asking how they are. A German yells back, calling the officer a “Tommy,” slang for an English soldier, and asks if they've learned German. Firing ceases and the conversation continues, though the Germans "refuse to disclose what regiment they were, or talk any military shop" (140). Instead, taunting the English, the Germans ask about sex with French women. The German-speaking officer refuses to answer and instead asks about the Kaiser. The Germans reply that he's in good health and asks about the Crown Prince. One of the soldiers yells "bugger the Crown Prince" (140) and laughter rings out, followed by singing. 

In this chapter, Graves details the British offensive battle at La Bassée. By late August, 1915, unofficial announcement of the offensive comes to Graves and the others at Béthune via "new batteries and lorry-trains of shells" (141) being delivered and "the joining up of the sap-heads to make a new front line" (141). Before the battle, though, Graves takes a military-ordered leave and returns home to England.

Graves’s family moved to London in early August, 1914, to take over the house of Graves’s uncle, Robert von Ranke, the "German consul-general" (142). Graves finds London's population fairly ignorant to the War, save for the beginnings of the German Zeppelin air raids. Graves shocks family friends by telling them that he slept through a bombing raid while in France. On returning to A Company in Béthune, a regular officer known as “The Actor” asks Graves what he's done on leave. Graves replies that he's "just walked about on some hills" (143). The Actor tells Graves that Graves didn't deserve leave.

On September 19th, Graves leads his company to the Cambrin trench line, where they will begin "the preliminary bombardment" (143) of the nearby German line. While the Royal Welch Battalion delivers their "heaviest bombardment" (143) to date, Graves is relieved that the Germans retaliate without vigor, as "most of their heavy artillery had been withdrawn" (143). Nevertheless, A Company suffers casualties, mostly from their own "shorts and blow-backs" (143) due to "duds" (143), or shoddily-made shells.

On September 23, Colonel Thomas returns to Béthune from Battalion Headquarters and delivers instructions on the offensive to the company officers. Thomas tells the men they'll drop their "blankets, packs, and greatcoats" (144) in Béthune on the 24th and begin the attack on the 25th. Their objectives will be Les Briques Farm, the town of Auchy, and the village of Haisnes, in that order. They will do this by a steady advance forward. The Actor begins giggling and asks who will is "responsible for this little effort" (145). Thomas replies that it must be Paul the Pimp, a young, disliked captain on the Divisional Staff. Thomas tells the officers not to let their men know this will be "a subsidiary attack" (145) to keep the Germans busy while the troops to their right "do the real work" (145). Thomas says they'll all get killed anyway and the officers laugh.

Thomas further explains that the attack will follow a forty-minute "discharge of the accessory" (145), or the English code word for poison gas. This will clear the men's path and they'll be supported by "three fresh divisions and the Cavalry Corps" (145). Thomas then lists the equipment to be carried by the men, including wire-cutters, for the wiring party to dismantle the barriers in No-Man's Land, and smoke-helmets, to protect from gas. The Middlesex Battalion will join the Royal Welch's effort. When Graves delivers the orders to his platoon, the men "seemed to believe it" (147) except for Sergeant Townsend, who doubts they'll get reinforcements from the Cavalry.

On September 24, the men march to Béthune to dump their blankets and greatcoats at the Montmorency barracks. After messing with the New Army, Graves and the others march back to the trenches at Cambrin. The men sing "comic songs" (149) that stick in Graves’s head. With so many troops moving in and around the area, A Company has to march miles out to "circle round to Cambrin" (149). Once settled at Cambrin, A Company hears that the Middlesex Battalion will lead the offensive, followed by the Royal Welch. The Scottish line infantry regiments of the Second Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, followed by the Cameronians, a Scottish rifle regiment, will fight to their left.

A "grey, watery dawn" (150) breaks on September 25. The English have given a lackluster bombardment, as the Germans had bombed the Army Reserve shell-dump two days earlier. The men wait for the "damned accessory" (150) to be released. Suddenly, a confusion of rifle-fire, heavy shelling, machine-guns, and shouting breaks out. The gas has been released but the English have suffered many casualties. Colonel Thomas heads to the Battalion Headquarters to receive orders but, due to its plain view, the Germans shell the headquarters just as Thomas arrives. The shelling cuts all communication between Battalion and Division Headquarters. Colonel Thomas suffers an injury, so the Adjutant takes over command of the Royal Welch.

Graves, along with the rest of A Company, have been waiting in the trenches for the traditional rum to arrive before they launch their attack. Thomas's orders to move to the front line come as soon as the storeman, drunk on the rum, appears. The storeman falls on his face in the "thick mud of a sump-pit" (151) and, to everyone's upset, the rum spills onto the ground. Stepping on the storeman's back, The Actor yells, "Company forward" (151).

Graves later finds out that at 430 a.m., the orders had come from Divisional Headquarters to discharge the gas "at all costs" (152). However, the wrenches for unscrewing the gas cylinders' lids are the wrong size. After scrambling to secure adjustable wrenches, soldiers had thrown a few cylinders into No-Man's Land. The thick gas cloud "gradually spread back" (152) to the English trenches. The Germans, with thicker gas helmets, fared better than the English, firing into the front-line trenches and exploding more gas cylinders.

Because of the communication lines' destruction, the Middlesex companies decide to charge ahead without waiting for the "intense bombardment" (152), which is to follow the forty minutes of gas. The Middlesex men, along with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, find the barbed wire in No-Man's Land intact. Caught between the barbed wire and their own offensive firing lines, most of the men are killed. The survivors lie in "shell-craters close to the German wire" (153), sniping at the Germans when they can. Fortunately, only one German machinegun remains in action.

The "intense bombardment" (157) following the gas attack begins. The bombardment concentrates on the German front trench and barbed wire though "many shells fell short" (157), killing more English soldiers. Graves drinks half a pint of rum he finds on the trench floor, in order to calm himself. Graves and the rest of A Company wait hours for the order to charge. Finally, they receive word that their attack has been postponed.

Graves tries to recall the rest of the day from his hazy memories. They spend it mostly "getting the wounded down to the dressing-station, spraying the trenches and dug-outs to get rid of the gas" (158), and clearing blocked trenches. At dusk, they go out into No-Man's Land to recover the wounded. The Germans behave "generously" (159), not firing a single shot until nearly dawn. By then, they've recovered all the wounded and most of the Royal Welch casualties. The Argyll and Sutherland suffer 700 casualties, including fourteen of their sixteen officers, and the Middlesex 550 casualties, including eleven officers.

Choate, Henry, and Hill, all second-lieutenants, are the only Middlesex officers to survive the offensive. That evening, Henry and Hill arrive at Middlesex Headquarters to find the Colonel and Adjutant sitting down to a meal of meat pie and whiskey. The senior officers respond "dully" (160) to Henry and Hill's report, reassign the officers, and offer them neither food nor drink. The Adjutant calls Henry and Hill back but only to criticize a soldier's uniform. Disheartened, Henry and Hill leave, telling Choate about their experience. Choate enters the Headquarters, gives his report, and then "boldly" (160) leans over the table, cuts a slice of meat pie, and eats it. He drinks a glass of whiskey, salutes the officers, and leaves.

On September 26, Graves finds himself one of only five surviving company officers of the Royal Welch, having lost Colonel Thomas to sniper fire. He assumes command of "what remained of 'B' Company" (161). The Actor takes command of A Company, which becomes lumped with Graves’s B Company so the men can sleep in shifts. Graves volunteers to take the first shift, until midnight, but can't rouse The Actor from his sleep until after Stand-to.

The men spend the next day carrying the dead to burial and cleaning their trench lines. Middlesex holds the line in the night while the Royal Welch carry the "cast-iron, heavy, and hateful" (162) gas-cylinders to their position for the next offensive. At 4 p.m., the next round of gas attack begins, and the Germans stay "absolutely silent" (162). The Royal Welch wait five hours for word to charge, but at 9 p.m. the Brigade calls off the attack.

No order comes at dawn on September 27. The stench of rotting corpses in No-Man's Land wafts into the trenches, causing Graves to vomit. That morning, a cry comes from No-Man's Land: a wounded Middlesex soldier has regained consciousness after two days. A "tender-hearted lance-corporal" (163) in the Royal Welch named Baxter asks for a volunteer to venture out with him to save the wounded man. Graves says he won't go with him until dusk, as he's the only officer on duty. Baxter elects to go by himself, waving a handkerchief. The Germans fire only to frighten him then allow him to reach the wounded man. Baxter dresses the man's wounds, gives him rum and a biscuit, then promises to come back for him at night. Baxter keeps his word and returns at dusk with a stretcher-party. Graves recommends Baxter for a Victoria Cross but receives word that Baxter will only receive "a Distinguished Conduct Medal" (164).

That morning, too, Graves ventures to the right to find the Tenth Highland Light Infantry (H.L.I.) nearly decimated. Graves reports back to The Actor that they might find their right flank "in the air at any moment" (164). The two men convert the communication trench between the two battalions into a fire-trench, facing the H.L.I. Scared and jumpy, the H.L.I. begin firing at the Royal Welch at dusk, thinking them German soldiers. A sergeant from the Fifth Scottish Rifles puts things right.