STARK. GRIM WAR-BOOK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 823, 18 November 1929, Page 9

STARK. GRIM WAR-BOOK

BRITISH COUNTERPART OF "ALL QUIET" WORK BY ROBERT GRAVES CtiUrd r.A. —i:;• 7Y h a r«-;>u —Cc*i* yn yU * Reed. 1.;>3 p.m. LONDON. Sunday. Robert Graves, the well-known poet, has published a war book. "Good-bye To All." that is likely to arouse a controversy. It is akin to "All Quiet on the Western Front” in its stark, grim realism. Many of the anecdotes are unquotable in a newspaper, emphasising the slow, horrible physical and mental deterioration of men of all ranks. Many unfortunate officers who hail two or more years’ continuous trench service became dipsomaniacs. Air. Graves says, and he knew three or four officers who worked up to two bottles of whisky a day before they were lucky enough to get wounded. The first and last bodies Mr. Graves saw in France were men who preferred suicide to the continued lighting. Air. Graves tolls a grim story of an officer who mistook dead men for cowards. He whistled his platoon to advance, and nobody appeared to heed. "You bloody cowards! Are you going to leave me alone?" cried tlie officer. A wounded sergeant cried out: “We are not cowards, sir. We are willing enough, but tlie men arc all dead." Machine-guns had caught them as they rose to the officer’s whistle.