'That Devil and His Claws'- The War Poems of Gavin Ewart

                                                      A Reluctant War Poet ?

                The British Army in Sicily 1943  NA4561  Courtesy of Wikipedia ( Image in Public Domain)


                                                     Its' hard for an old man,
                                                    who's seen wars
                                                    to welcome that devil
                                                     and his claws 

                                                  'Three weeks to Argentina'




The above lines were written by a World War 2 veteran  as the 1982 Falklands War began : Gavin Ewart ( 1916- 1995) was educated at Wellington College then at Cambridge Univeristy. At the age of seventeen he had a poem published in the highly esteemed literary magazine 'New Verse' . Ewart's success at writing poetry continued, at the age of twenty three his first poetry collection was published in 1939.

When war broke out, Ewart  became an officer in what he later described as a "Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment engaged on the air defence of factories and airfields in the UK " - an experience he called the most boring period of his life. Ewart  saw active service as an officer in the Royal Artillery during the North Africa Campaign in 1942, then in Italy, being posted to a mobile operations room, travelling the west coast of Italy by motorbike. Ewart returned home to England in May 1946.

Then followed a period from 1946- 1964 when Ewart had no poetry published and was not particularly active on the literary scene. The poet Peter Porter has been credited with encouraging Ewart to return to poetry, and a new collection of his work appeared in 1966. It is striking how the War seemed to have quelled his enthusiasm for writing poetry. However , four of Ewart's  poems appeared in  'I Burn for England- An anthology of the poetry of  World War II' from 1966 . In 1972  Ewart stated that
" I don't think that any 'great' poetry came out of the Second World War ( except for The Unquiet Grave which .....seems to me to fill the bill for anyone who is looking 'for the great war poem') "

To give this work  its full title -The Unquiet Grave; a Word Cycle by 'Palinurus' - was a book written  by the critic and editor  Cyril Connolly. George Orwell reviewed it in January 1945, and noted the book's "dominant tone ,a refined rather pessimistic hedonism ." Hard to conceive of The Unquiet Grave being a poem.

Several years ago I wrote an article 'No More War Poets Anymore ', which the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship rejected for publication in their magazine 'Siegfried's Journal'. One question raised therein was who meets the definition of a 'war poet' ? Gavin Ewart wrote poetry whilst in uniform, but as we have seen , he was a young published poet before World War 2, and the subject of war only inspired a small amount of his work. Yet what is most intriguing is the range of aspects of war covered : 

Looking at the Ewart's published war poems  there looms a lighthearted feel that readers of War Poetry tend not to appreciate; 'Officers Mess' makes catty comments about the officers and their wives present, with one party guest collapsing after his beer is spiked with gin. Another 'Oxford Leave' , first published in  the anthology ' More Poems from the Forces ' (1943) , concerns  a drunken night out ending with

It takes the loves and the parties but nostalgically in the brain
And even in the Army, their memories remain
And these are real people, not the distortion of dream,
And though one might not believe it, they' re all of them 
           what they seem

Gavin Ewart would later become famous for writing love poems , some quite erotic. His collection 'Pleasures of the Flesh' 1966 was banned by W H Smiths' shops when it first appeared, and this sonnet is particularly touching.

We make mistakes, my darling, all the time,
Love, where we are not wanted, sigh alone,
Simply because our passions are not tame.
No fairy story dragons to be slain,
Our living difficulties are not so simple.
Huge effort cannot bring a love to birth,
The future offers no instructive sample
Of what's to come up a warlike earth ......

First appearing in 'Poems from the Forces -A Collection of Verse-edited with an introduction by Keidrych Rhys ,' from 1941, the poem hints that Ewart realised that being stationed in Britain would not last. And that how ever powerful love is, it can not shield one from the uncertainties generated by a world at war.

And  Ewart could write some quite striking and harrowing  lines about the actual nature of War ..such as these lines written in April 1945 whilst serving in Italy

War Dead 

With grey arm twisted over a green face
The dust of passing trucks swirls over him,
Lying by the roadside in his proper place,
For he crossed the ultimate far rim
That hides from us the valley of the dead.
He lies like used equipment thrown aside,
Of which our swift advance can take no heed.
Roses, triumphal cars- but this one died.

Once war memorials, pitiful attempt
In some vague way regretfully to atone
For some lost futures that the dead had dreamt,
Covered the land with their lamenting stone-
But in our hearts we bear a heavier load;
The bodies of the dead beside the road.


Sources Consulted 

Have consulted the 'Poetryarchive.org'  entry for Gavin Ewart   for biographical details.

Quotes from the second and third paragraphs are  from Gavin Ewart's self written biographical notes at the end of the anthology 'The Poetry of War 1939-1945,  New English Library, 1972

George Orwell quote from  review of 'The Unquiet Grave' , 'The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 3 'As I Please' 1943-1945.

Poems

Would liked to have gone to The Poetry Library to consult more of Gavin Ewart's work, but alas not possible at the moment. 

'Three Weeks to Argentina ' appears in the collection 'The Young Pobble's Guide to His Toes' , Hutchinson , 1985

'Sonnet' originally appeared in  'Poems from the Forces -A Collection of Verses by serving members of the Navy, Army, and Air Force, edited with an introduction by Keidrych Rhys ,' Routledge , 1941

'Oxford Leave' originally appeared in  'More Poems from the Forces -A Collection of Verses by serving members of the Navy, Army, and Air Force, edited by Keidrych Rhys ,' from 1943

'Officers Mess' , 'Oxford Leave' and 'Sonnet '  from 'I Burn for England-An anthology of the poetry of World War II', Selected and Introduced by Charles Hamblett, First Publishing,  1966.

'War Dead' appears in 'The Voice of War-Poems of The Salamander Oasis Trust' , Michael Joseph Ltd, 1995




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A Burnt Ship  17th century war and literature.