Due to these experiences, Graves begins to suffer from neurasthenia, or post-traumatic stress disorder.Īfter suffering a severe wound in battle, his colonel erroneously reports Graves’s death to his mother. He then joins the fighting in France, where he spends the next year in the trenches, dealing with gas attacks, heavy shelling, and heavy casualties. After graduating, Graves spends a few months commanding soldiers at a detention camp for Germans in England. Graves undergoes Officers' Training School and, at just 19, becomes a second-lieutenant with the prestigious Royal Welch Fusiliers. At school, Graves writes poetry, takes up boxing, and begins a romantic relationship with a younger boy, whom he calls “Dick.” Graves also begins to question his once unshakable faith in the Church of England and practicing "implicit obedience to orders" (58).Įngland enters World War I just after Graves finishes Charterhouse and he enlists just "a day or two later" (67), hoping to avoid going to college at Oxford.
With tensions between England and Germany rising, Graves becomes self-conscious of his German middle name, von Ranke, which he drops. There, Graves feels oppressed and upset by the school's strict adherence to traditions. Graves spends his high school years at a private preparatory school in Surrey called Charterhouse. As a boy, Graves’s mother instills in him a strong sense of Protestant values and Graves’s father, a poet, exposes Graves to classical and canonical literature. Graves is the middle child of ten, born late in his parents' lives, and spends most of his childhood cared for by a nurse in a large house in Wimbledon, outside of London. His father, Alfred Graves, comes from a line of loquacious Irish preachers and his mother, Amalie von Ranke, comes from a reserved German family of physicians and clergymen. Graves begins his autobiography with his first childhood memories and a genealogical history of his parents' families.
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