'There has been a lot of fighting hereabouts. The trenches have made
themselves rather than been made, and run inconsequently in and out of
the big thirty-foot high stacks of bricks; it is most confusing. The
parapet of a trench which we don't occupy is built up with ammunition
boxes and corpses . . .'
In one of the most honest and candid self-portraits ever committed to
paper, Robert Graves tells the extraordinary story of his experiences as
a young officer in the First World War. He describes life in the
trenches in vivid, raw detail, how the dehumanizing horrors he witnessed
left him shell-shocked. They were to haunt him for the rest of his life.