Britain
Robert Graves
1895–1985 Officer, Royal Welch Fusiliers, 1914–1919; poet and memoirist
Born in Wimbledon in 1895, Robert Graves was the son of the Irish poet Alfred Perceval Graves and a mother from the German von Ranke family. He took a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in August 1914 and reached France in May 1915. His first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, appeared in 1916 and earned him a reputation as a war poet. In July 1916, on the Somme, a shell wounded him so badly that he was officially reported as having died of wounds. In 1917, back in England, he helped keep his friend Siegfried Sassoon from a court martial. His memoir Good-Bye to All That appeared in 1929. Graves, who also wrote I, Claudius, died on 7 December 1985 and was buried at Deià, Mallorca.