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Alun Lewis

Allied troops clambering up a rough, precipitous hillside in typical Arakan hill country during a daylight attack.

Allied troops clambering up a rough, precipitous hillside in typical Arakan hill country during a daylight attack.

Alun Lewis was born in a Welsh village named Cwmaman on 1st July 1915. As a boy, Lewis developed an early interest in English poetry and greatly idolised the work of Edward Thomas, an appreciation that continued throughout his life. Following education at Cowbridge Grammar School and the University College of Wales, Lewis pursued a career in journalism. However, after this career path proved to be unsuccessful, he trained as a teacher in Manchester and earned a living as a supply teacher. 

Despite his pacifist leanings, following the outbreak of the Second World War Lewis joined the British Royal Army Engineers. In November 1942, he sailed for India and in early 1944 he was sent to the Burmese front. En route, at Arakan in Lower Burma Lewis died in a mystifying occurrence involving his own pistol.

Whilst involved in conflict, Lewis published a poetry collection and an assimilation of short stories. In his work he describes the emptiness of military life and the effect new places and situations had on him. 

Alun Lewis’s second book of poems, Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, was published posthumously in August 1945 with a foreword by Robert Graves, whose eldest son David had also been killed in the Arakan. Robert Graves had corresponded with Lewis and helped him with this collection.

Lewis has become one of the best known poets from the Second World War. Below is an extract from one of Lewis’s most recognised poems - All Day it Has Rained. In this poem, Lewis describes the loneliness and boredom of army life and his yearning for home and family. The full poem can be found on the War Poets website here.

No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap,
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home;