Page 33 - History of War - Issue 30-16

A DEAD BOCHE (EXTRACT)
ROBERT GRAVES

Written: July 1916

…propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green…

After leave, Robert Graves returned to France with the
new rank of a captain at the end of June 1916. He
arrived on the Somme battlei elds following the bloody,
i ve-day battle to capture Mametz Wood, which was the
largest wooded area across the whole front. Graves’
battalion was stationed near the site, surrounded
by the dead, a few days before the planned attack
on High Wood, which sat a couple of miles away.
The charge began in the evening of 15 July and the
wood was i nally captured by the 47th Division on 15
September, after a series of failed attempts. As the
Royal Welch Fusiliers moved up the reserve line on 19
July, Graves was severely injured after being hit in the
chest with exploding bomb fragments.

© TopFoto

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