# Quote — Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That

> "I got shot in the guts at the Beaumont-Hamel show. It hurt like hell, let me tell you. They took me down to the field-hospital. I was busy dying, but a company-sergeant major had got it in the head, and he was busy dying, too; and he did die. Well, as soon as ever the sergeant-major died, they took out that long gut... and they put it into me, grafted it on somehow. Wonderful chaps, these medicos! … Well, this sergeant-major seems to have been an abstemious man. The lining of the new gut is much better than my old one; so I'm celebrating it. I only wish I'd borrowed his kidneys, too."

- Author: [Robert Graves](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-graves.md)
- Book: [Goodbye to All That](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-graves/goodbye-to-all-that.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Graves#Goodbye_to_All_That_(1929)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-graves/goodbye-to-all-that/i-got-shot

## More from this book

> Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welsh, a new officer joined the company... When he turned in that night, he heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-graves/goodbye-to-all-that/cuinchy-bred-rats.md)

> Hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. It would have been difficult to remain religious in the trenches even if one had survived the irreligion of the training battalion at home.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-graves/goodbye-to-all-that/hardly-one-soldier.md)

> James Burford, collier and fitter, was the oldest soldier of all. When I first spoke to him in the trenches, he said: "Excuse me, sir, will you explain what this here arrangement is on the side of my rifle?" "That's the safety catch. Didn't you do a musketry-course at the depôt?" "No, sir, I was a re-enlisted man, and I spent only a fortnight there. The old Lee-Metford didn't have no safety-catch." I asked him when he had last fired a rifle. "In Egypt in 1882," he said. "Weren't you in the South African War?" "I tried to re-enlist, but they told me I was too old, sir... My real age is sixty-three."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-graves/goodbye-to-all-that/james-burford-collier.md)