Chapter 14 Summary and Analysis

During the summer of 1915, the English soldiers were equipped with new types of trench weapons and the artillery units received much heavier guns. Graves spent the summer months in the Cambrin and Cuinchy trenches between rear area billets in Bythune and the surrounding villages. As the weeks went by, he found that he had become pessimistic, nervous, and highly superstitious—all traits that he initially found repulsive in old hands. Death was so omnipresent that his battalion, at a regular strength of roughly 800, enlisted perhaps 20,000 men on its rolls throughout the war.

Graves received a letter from a cousin informing him that Jack, his beloved school chum, was acting untoward; a later letter from Jack claimed the cousin to be misinformed and malicious. Somehow, Graves took the schoolhouse news seriously enough. He was finally happy to receive a transfer from...