[citation needed] On 8 August 1914, four days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany, Harvey joined the 5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment as a private.

[citation needed] His battalion was posted to France in March 1915, where he was promoted to lance corporal and awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

He seized him, but, finding his revolver empty and the enemy having opened fire, he was called back by Corporal Knight, and the prisoner escaped.

[2] He spent the rest of the war in prisoner-of-war camps, including those at Gütersloh, Crefeld, Schwarmstedt, Holzminden, Bad Colberg, and Stralsund.

He began to write more intensively in captivity, and poems were sent back to England for publication: his second collection, Gloucestershire Friends, appeared in 1917.

On returning from a spell of solitary confinement at Holzminden after a failed escape attempt, he saw that a fellow prisoner had drawn a picture over his bed in chalk of ducks in a pool of water.

[5] In 1920 he published a memoir of his prison-camp experiences, Comrades in Captivity; and in 1921 Farewell, an acknowledgement of his intention to remove himself from the literary world.

Gurney had written "After-Glow" and "To His Love" for Harvey, on hearing of his supposed death in 1916;[6] and "Ypres-Minsterworth" as a gesture of solidarity with him in his captivity.

He was friends with Rutland Boughton and the local MP, Morgan Philips Price, who worked with him to promote the arts and the interests of Foresters.

[citation needed] His later poetry of remembrance captured those feelings, but retained the essential humour of his early work and included verse in local dialect.