"I never got over David's death": Robert Graves, Affinity Welshness and the Royal Welch Fusiliers

London-born poet and writer Robert Graves (1895-1985) famously declared that he was ‘Welsh by adoption’. His deep emotional connection with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, with whom he served during the First World War, reinforced this identification with Wales, which had been forged in childhood during family holidays in Harlech. When the Second World War broke out, Graves’s sense of ‘affinity’ Welshness had devastating implications for his eldest son, David whom he badgered to enlist with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and who subsequently died in Myanmar in 1943. Based on letters of the Graves family held at St John’s College Oxford, this paper shows how, in order to find consolation in David’s death, Graves attempted to posthumously place his son within a wider communion with their shared Welsh regimental identity. Through various commemorative practices - epitaphs, poetry, literary tributes, and even regimental dinners – Graves continually sought to reconnect his military service with that of David and attach meaning to both. In particular, his increasing obsession with the idea of male child sacrifice informed his immediate postwar ‘Welsh’ work The White Goddess (1948). Overall, this paper demonstrates how an identification with a Welsh regiment, and a conscious affinity with Wales, can tell us something important about the functioning of human relationships and the construction of dual identities in wartime