“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?"”

— Robert Graves

"I tried to re-enlist, but they told me I was too old, sir... My real age is sixty-three."
Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch.12.

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Robert Graves 117

English poet and novelist 1895–1985

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