Robert Graves had been a pupil at Charterhouse when George Mallory was a Master there. Mallory introduced him to contemporary literature and took him mountaineering in the holidays.
At the outbreak of the First World War Graves enlisted taking a commission in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant (on probation) on 12 August. He was confirmed in his rank on 10 March 1915, and received rapid promotions to lieutenant on 5 May 1915 and to captain on 26 October.
He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about the experience of frontline conflict. At the Battle of the Somme, he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die and was officially reported as having died of wounds. He gradually recovered and, apart from a brief spell back in France, spent the remainder of the war in England.