‘It is my own story I am trying to tell, and as such it must be received; those who expect a universalization of the Great War must look for it elsewhere.’
So wrote George Sherston in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930), the second part of Sassoon’s fictional autobiographical trilogy. Sherston was Sassoon’s alter ego.
As Sassoon was an anti-war protestor, the picture he portrays is not a rosy one. As these pages reveal, all recruits had to partake in the rather harmless activity of identifying regimental badges. There was also the reality of war: necessary bayonet training and knowing about the very real danger of gas.
Graves appears in Sassoon’s book as David Cromlech.