Remember Babi Yar -'Art Destroys Silence'

'Babi Yar' -Yevgeny Yevtushenko (born 1933)



People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence. 

'Testimony-The Memoirs of Dimitri  Shostakovich,' ( edited by Solomon Volkov) ,1979.

 

                                   

                                                     

During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Babi Yar,  a ravine by Kiev, was the site of  a particular horrendous massacre of  some 33,000 Jews on 29th September -30th September 1941 at the hand of the Nazi killing unit, Einzsatsgruppen: The Babi Yar Memorial Centre maintains that 120,000 people were shot by the Germans and their allies. Those who died included " Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents, mental patients, civilians of Roma, Russian and Ukrainian origin."

The atrocity was immortalised by Shostakovich's 13th symphony in B flat minor, opus 113, completed in 1962, which opened with a musical setting of the poem 'Babi Yar' by Yevgeny Yevtushenko . This poem was first published in Soviet journal ' Literaturania Gazeta' in 1961.

The Soviet Union had seen a wave of anti-Jewish feeling instigated by Stalin in 1952- 1953. Yevtushenko's poem presented the massacre of 29th September -30th September 1941 as the culmination of antisemitism generally, and referenced anti- Jewish feeling amongst Russian people. The poem opens with a protest that

 " No monument stands over Babi Yar/A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone."

Although more cultural expression was permitted under Kruschev , the first performances of the 13th sympathy were placed under immense scrutiny  by the Soviet authorities. Two performances, on 1st December and 3rd December 1962 went ahead at the Moscow conservatory. Yevtushenko soon had to rewrite parts of the poem ( that were being performed as part of the symphony ) as it was felt that not enough emphasis was placed on the non-Jewish people who were killed at Babi Yar. One revised verse read

"I think of Russia's heroic deed
In blocking the way to fascism,
To the smallest dewdrop, she is close to me
In her very being and her fate."

( Source 'The New Shostakovich', Ian MacDonald. 2006 edition)

The combination of the poem and the symphony , particularly as Shostakovich was well known outside the Soviet Union, helped to highlight Babi-Yar. The massacre was also a setting for a scene in the famous 1978 US television series 'Holocaust' . Memorials to the victims have now been placed in different parts of Europe and North America.

The treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union was to remain a major human rights concern during the Cold War, and beyond. Yet the collaboration between Shostakovich and Yevtushenko over 'Babi Yar' has made quite an impact :

"No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself.
The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other’s eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed – very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-“They come!”

-“No, fear not – those are sounds
Of spring itself. She’s coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!”

-“They break the door!”

-“No, river ice is breaking…”

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.
May “Internationale” thunder and ring
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian"

Benjamin Opoknik translation

Links

Babi Yar holocaust memorial centre

Yevgeny Yevtushenko reading Babi Yar in English

Shostakovich Symphony 13

Picture Credit , In public domain courtesy of Wikipedia UK

Title : Soviet POWs covering a mass grave after the Babi Yar Massacre 1st October 1941 

UPDATE 2025 

World War 2 Poetry blog supports the Second World War Experience Centre  Please consider looking at their website and the SWWEC Youtube Channel 

World War 2 Poetry blog welcomes the new War Poetry Review website run by the War Poets Association

UPDATE 2026 

I have been alerted to the fact that Shostakovich's 13th symphony 'Babi Yar Suite' was not the first symphonic work to commemorate the Babi Yar massacre. Jewish Ukrainian composer Dymitri Klebanov's first symphony In Memoriam to the Martyrs of Babi Yar (1945) would have this distinction. 

Holocaust Music  Entry for Klebanov. 

John Bayliss (1919- 2008)

                     A Forgotten Poet of World War 2                                      
                                  

A pillbox in Northumberland Avenue in London, with Nelson's Column visible in the background, 19 June 1945

Courtesy of Creative Commons Licence 

              I first came across the work of John Bayliss from looking at Andrew Sinclair 'The War of the Wasp- The Lost Decade of the Forties'  (1989). The book's title came from a John Bayliss poem 'Epilogue : Testament and Prophecy' .

                 "And  I say to you who have seen
                 war like a wasp under a warm apple
                 rise and sting the unwary
                 that its breed shall multiply
                 and fill the air with wings, and dapple
                 disaster on the bright sky,
                and worse things shall be than have been.

                  But there shall yet be  better "

RAF serving John Bayliss is probably most known for his poem Reported Missing.

             Born in October 1919, educated at St. Catherine College Cambridge. John Bayliss' poetry was already widely published in magazines such as (Modern Reading, The Providence Journal, Poetry London, Lyra ) by 1943- the year that 'Indications', a joint poetry collection featuring John Bayliss, James Kirkup and John Ormond Thomas was published by Grey Walls Press. Bayliss was also an accomplished literary editor before joining up in 1943.

John Bayliss also co-edited an anthology with Alex Comfort ( poet, writer, and pacifist) titled 'New Road' .
A review can be found in The Spectator Archives  Whilst in 1944, John Bayliss' poetry collection 'The White Knight and other Poems' was published Fortune Press.

A particular favourite of mine is 'Sonnet' , just sums perfectly the vulnerability of a town or city from bombing as in to 'bear the flame' . Time or the weathering of the climate can not diminish them, but an enemy out to avenge a bombing raid can.

               SONNET

          .....And all the lovely towns that lie in darkness,
               carved by their statuary of spire and wall,
              betrayed by tower or winding terraces,
              white road and whiter waterfall;
              what must there fear, who did not fear the spoil
              and spell of Time, whom winter did not tame
             with blade of frost,-shall these now bear the flame
              because an alien town has suffered first?


             So was it ever with the beauty made
             to stir and breathe by man. His creatures fade
             even in their imagining.
            And now the darkness breaks into a thing
            of fire, and bell in burning tower
             sounds birth and death with one far ringing."


From 'I Burn for England- and anthology of the poetry of World War II' Selected and Introduced by Charles Hamblett. ( 1966). Finally, from the same anthology, the only war poem that I can think of that mentions Tarot cards,- John Bayliss' -An Old Photograph'

             "See what rewards the Tarot send;-
              these children playing in the sand
              have met their deaths by water of
             under the moon in the dark air
             on deserts where steel dragons stood
             triumphant in the angel's stead.

             For this one found his castles were
             no counter to the waves of war,
             and fever took this one and made
             the salt sea water drive him mad,
             and this one died a falling dream
             beside a friendly aerodrome;

            One photograph, three graveless men,
             the Tarot pack, All Hallows moon. "
       
       Possibly inspired by T.S.Elliot's 'The Wasteland' and its several  references to the Tarot.
     
       

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Sassoon re-appraised by World War 2 Serving Poets

 
                                                    A study in influence 

                                               Painting of Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot



'Silent Service'-Siegfried Sassoon

Now, mulltifold, let Britain's patient power
Be proven within us for the world to see,
None are exempt from service in this hour:
And vanquished in ourselves we dare not be.
  Now, for a sunlit future, we can show
  The clenched resolved endurance that defies
  Daemons in dark,-and toward that future go
  With earth's defended freedom in our eyes,
  In every separate soul let courage shine-
 A kneeling angel holding faith's front -line

 May 23rd, 1940

                                'Silent Service' seems to be so  lacking in passion compared with Sasoon's earlier work. Especially considering the poet's status. Sassoon was one of the most rated war poets of World War one, and his poetry,  semi-autobiographical prose, and his 1917 declaration against the continuation of World War 1 must rank him high in those who have contributed to the popular 'Disenchantment' view of World War one :  The view that either Britain should have remained neutral or the cost of the victory was simply far too high in terms of casualties, which remains widely held today.

Yet Sassoon as a writer  was simply ill prepared for World War 2 . His prose writing at the time was charming and nostalgic such as 'The Old Century and Seven More Years' (1938). Sassoon wrote few poems about World War 2 that were ever published, whilst the ones that emerged are largely ignored.  This was not the case of all World War 1 poets. The World War 2 poetry of both Herbert Read, H.D., Constance Renshaw, and Vera Brittain are still anthologised in collections relating to either World War. Robert Graves established  quite a creative rapport with Alun Lewis, Edmund Blunden with Keith Douglas, so it was also  possible for a World War 1 poet to connect with younger serving poets.

There are reasons why Sassoon was out of sync at the start of World War 2. He was living the life of a country gentleman in Wiltshire being faced with the prospect of having to take in evacuees. His marriage was failing, he had started to back away from his public  endorsement of the Peace Pledge Union and simply let his membership dues lapse when World War 2 broke out.

Yet Sassoon's long term reputation was to survive : I was  lucky enough to hear a programme originally broadcast for Sassoon's 80th birthday ( 8th September 1966)  by BBC radio 'Home Service from the West'  in 1966, via the British Library Sound Archives. Presented by World War 2 serving poet Vernon Scannell, who praised Sassoon

It was the war poets and particularly Sassoon who gave us the key to the world our fathers had known. 

Vernon Scannell 's father , James Bain, served during World War one ; I've not managed to find the exact details of his service. Scannell's childhood and youth were blighted by his father's violence .

Fellow poet Charles Causley contributed to said programme.

 But in the work of Sassoon, I suddenly say that by using common speech in some magical way, he turned into the memorable and the most moving accounts of what really happened to people in war. He enabled us, somehow or other, to take part in the Second World War without the terrible possibility of disillusionment which crippled so many millions of people in the First World War. I think he made it clear more than historian certainly more than any journalist and most certainly more than any politician. It was the poet who said quite clearly what the score was. 

Causley's father served in the 2nd Wessex Division of the Royal Army Driver Service corp, contracted T.B. as a consequence of  phosphorous gas, and invalided out of the Forces in 1919. He never recovered his health and died on 31st March 1924, when Charles Causley was five years old.

Vernon Scannell and Sassoon met only once, but Charles Causley visited Sassoon a number of times at his home  in the 1950's and 1960's.

                     Furthermore, a collection of Sassoon's recent poetry with the title 'Octave' was published to coincide with Sassoon's 80th birthday. This was funded via an appeal backed by a whole range of poets including : John Masefield, Edmund Blunden, C.Day Lewis,  Roy Fuller, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, R.S.Thomas. Charles Causely wrote the introduction with more praise to Sassoon.

Above all living writers, his were the poems that first leapt at me from the page. After I had left school, and the advancing shadow of the Second World War steadily darkened the nineteen-thirties, Sassoon's were the poems that I learnt by heart ....

Welsh poet Vernon Watkins, served with RAF intelligence in World War 2 and stated in ;

Siegfried Sassoon is the one poet emerging from the First World War to become the prophet of the Second..

 One less enthusiastic voice was that of Royal Navy serving poet Alan Ross (1922-2007), writing in his autobiography , 'Blindfold Games' about the poetry that he was reading in the late 1930's

Sassoon and Blunden, as once Rupert Brooke, fulfilled one kind of need, but their later poetry seemed archaic and dull compared to Auden. 

Yes perhaps Ross was being too harsh. Andrew Marr in his 'We British -The Poetry of a People' highlighted the impact of World War 1 poetry.

In short, 1915 dragged English poetry from 1852 to about 1950 in one angry, impatient lurch. The war changed almost everything about Britain, and that included its relationship to poetry.



Alan Ross was possibly the greatest  'War at Sea' poet. He hated the sea, which is not surprising after serving on Arctic Convoy JW51B at the end of 1942. Ross had the ability to evoke the horror and claustrophobia of sea warfare set in a hostile and bleak natural environment. Yes also the talent to record the conversation of sailors of all ranks. Vernon Scannell highlighted this fact in his work on World War 2 poetry 'Not Without Glory' by noticing the influence of Sassoon and Owen in Ross' poem 'Survivors'.

But soon they joke, easy and warm,
As men will who have died once
Yet somehow were able to find their way-
Muttering this was not included in their pay.

Later, sleepless at night, the brain spinning
With cracked images, they won't forget
The confusion and the oily dead,
Not yet the casual knack of living. 

And this is the key to Sassoon's legacy to World War 2 poetry. He may not have managed to write striking World War 2 poetry, but this genre could not escape his influence.



Sources :
'Programme to mark Siegfried Sassoon's 80th Birthday ' BBC Home Service broadcast 9th September 1966.'  British Library Sound Server Jukebox  T8557,
'Not Without Glory-Poets of the Second World War'  Vernon Scannell ,Woburn Press, 1976
' Vernon Watkins on Dylan Thomas and Other Poets & Poetry, selected by Gwen Watkins and Jeff Towns'
Parthian, 2013,
'We British-The Poetry of a People', Andrew Marr, Fourth Estate, 2015.

UPDATE  New blog launched by Michael Bully in February 2023, Bleak Chesney Wold Charles Dickens/ 'dark' Victoriana 

World War 2 Poetry blog supports the Second World War Experience Centre  Please consider looking at their website and the SWWEC Youtube Channel 

The Scottish World War 2 Poets- part one

                              The Scottish World War 2 Poets and the Desert


"There are many dead in the brutish desert
     who lie uneasy
among the scrub in this landscape of half-wit
stunted ill-will. For the dead land is insatiate
and necrophilious . The sand is blowing about still.
....
And sleep now. Sleep here the sleep of the dust." 

From the First Elegy of 'Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica'
Hamish Henderson.

                                                      Thanks to Boing Boing net : Image of WW2 plane found in desert

World War 2 followed the Scottish Renaissance of 1920s and 1930's, a new Scottish cultural  awareness in poetry and fiction writing, particularly emphasising national identity, folklore and language. In such a background the Scottish National Party was founded in 1934.

The North African 'Desert War'  involved a fair number of poets, many were Scottish, including ; Edwin Morgan, Sorley MacLean, Hamish Henderson, Malcolm MacCleod, G S Fraser, George Campbell Hay. Some of these poems were originally written in Gaelic or Doric. Vernon Scannell was from Buckinghamshire but served with the 51st Highland Division, as did fellow poet John Jarmain from Shrewsbury.  Other poets who fought here included Spike Milligan and Keith Douglas.

In fact with was the North African campaign that gave rise to the most significant attempt to collect World War 2 poetry, the Cairo based 'Oasis Trust' that published its first anthology by service personnel in 1943 . This organisation was revived as the Oasis Salamander Trust which ran from 1976- 2012, and a whole series of anthologies resulted. Yet  war memoir has not defined later views of  the Desert War:  Keith Douglas 'Alamein to Zazem'  first appeared in 1946, two years after the poet's death in 1944. Vernon Scannell's 'Argument of Kings' ( 1987) and Spike Milligan's comic 'Rommel?'Gunner Who? A Confrontation in the Desert' (1976) also deservea mention. But no work steps up like 'The Cruel Sea ' does , a book that became a film, and contributed so much to how the Atlantic convoys are portrayed.

               There was an  understandable reluctance to glorify nature, reminding one of World War 2 Royal Navy serving writers such as Alan Ross and Nicholas Monsarrat  admitting that they hated the sea. War was not shown as somehow fracturing an otherwise rural idyll. The desert climate saw extremes of heat during the day and cold during the night. Sandstorms were a hazard, flies a major plague.


There was a lack of triumphalism evident in the Desert poetry. Hamish Henderson recalled a captured German soldier saying to him "Africa changes everything :In reality we are allies, and the desert is our common enemy."

               Sorley Maclean's 'Death Valley' , just as Keith Douglas in this poem 'Vergissmenicht' - was moved to write about a dead German soldier

Sitting dead in 'Death Valley'
below the Ruweisat Ridge,
a boy with his forelock down about his cheek
and his face slate-grey;

And in the last three verses stresses a shared affinity; the soldiers on both sides are sent to fight by those in power:

Was the boy of the band
who abused the Jews
and Communists, or of the greater
band of those

led, from the beginning of generations,
unwillingly to the trial
and made delirium of every war
for the sake of rulers?

Whatever his desire or mishap,
his innocence of malignity
he showed no pleasure in his death
below the Ruweisat Ridge.

Whilst John MacInes, writing about the Allied victory of El-Alamein in his poem of the same name,

That victory was not with price-
We paid for it with our hearts' blood;
We are leaving thousands prostrate
In graves in the dust of Alamein. 

Of course the contrast of the desert and home memories were marked in poetry; To return to Hamish Henderson, from the 'Second Elegy of  Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica',  there's a great passage showing a soldier portraying the harshness of nature shrinking into a stage set, as a way of somehow managing the ferocity of desert warfare. But such a respite can only last for an instant.


                       The dreamers remember
a departure like a migration. They recall a landscape
associated with warmth and veils and a pantomime
but never focused exactly. The flopping curtain
reveals scene-shifters running with a freshly painted
incongruous sets. Here childhood's prairie garden
looms like a pampas, where grown-ups stalk (gross outlaws)
on legs of tree trunk; recedes; and the strepitant jungle
dwindles to scruff or shrubs on a docile common,
all but real for a moment, then gone.



Many Thanks  for all their help
Richie McCaffrey
The Scottish Poetry Library

Further reading ' From the Line-Scottish War Poetry' edited David Goldie & Roderick Watson
                            (The Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2014) ..Quotes from poems were taken                                 from this work.
                            'Return to Oasis-War Poems &Recollections From the Middle East 1940-1946'
                             (The Salamander Oasis Trust, 1946)
                             'Scottish Poets in the Desert' Angus Calder, (article from 'Southfields 1999'



UPDATE  New blog launched by Michael Bully in February 2023 Bleak Chesney Wold Charles Dickens/ 'dark' Victoriana 

World War 2 Poetry blog supports the Second World War Experience Centre  Please consider looking at their website and the SWWEC Youtube Channel 

Coventry 14th November 1940

           "The raiders first fired the medieval centre, crowned by its beautiful cathedral, which was gutted. They then poured hundreds of tones of bombs into the city, in an attack which lasted ten hours. Approaching one-third of the ctiy's houses were made uninhabitable, .....A hundred acres of the city centre were destroyed. Five hundred and fifty-four people were killed, eight hundred and sixty-five seriously wounded."
'The People's War Britain 1939- 1945' -Angus Calder

Painting of bombed Coventry Cathedral, November 1940 ~ by John Piper, 1940 

THAT NIGHT OF DEATH

by John J.Rattigan, November 1940

Who can forget that night of death,
Wrought by the sky devil's fiery breath,
Who can forget that night of pain,
Dealt out by a madman's twisted brain.

We shall not forget as our homes we rebuild,
On bomb-scarred ground where innocent were killed,
We shall not forget as we look at the land,
Where once stood a building so stately and grand.

Even God's house is not safe from this Hun,
Who bombs and destroys at the setting of the sun.
So let him send over his cowardly hordes,
Who shatter the homes of paupers and Lords.

That night was severe, there is no doubt,
We had a hard blow, but they can't knock us out.
For our men are of steel, our women won't kneel,
Nor children for mercy plea.
A new hope will arise, when the world is free,
From the rubble and ashes of Coventry

----------------------------------------------

( Not sure who owns the copyright to this work but quoted with kind permission from http://www.familyresearcher.co.uk )

Particularly appreciate the defiance of the poem, the use of the term 'Hun' seems archaic.So much war poetry emphasises evokes the helplessness and hopelessness that war can generate, whilst this poem confronts the horror war but suggests rejuvenation. Along with the reminder of how air attack ensured that civilians could have direct experience of warfare.  The notion of a war poet being  on some mission to depict the 'pity of war' to pampered civilians was over, and bombs don't differentiate between the homes of rich and poor.

As we are now approaching Remembrance season, been thinking over the work of Alun Lewis, ( 1.July 1915- 5.March 1944). Serving as an Intelligence Officer  with the Royal Engineers, he died near Arakan , Burma in what his regimental history described as (being) "accidentally wounded by a pistol. " Lewis left only one collection published in his life time 'Raiders Dawn' (1942)

Vernon Scannell noted in his work 'Not Without Glory' (1976)
"He did not directly experience the terror, exultation, weariness and despair of battle and hammer out records of what he endured. He was a soldier-poet of a different kind; the reluctant unhappy warrior, suffering boredom, exasperation, loneliness, exile, frustration and anxiety, the civilian in uniform, fighting not the enemy in arms  but the debilitating longing for the lost peace, for comfort and love. He was in some ways the representative  poet of the Second World War."

This poem 'Peace'  is taken from 'Selected Poems of Alun Lewis' selected  by Jenny Hooker and Gweno Lewis with a foreword by Robert Graves. Graves's own son Ltn. (John) David Nicholson Graves, who like his father served with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, was killed in action near Arakan, on 18th March 1943.

Peace

"The wind blows
Through her eyes,
Snow is blanker
In her whiter thighs,
The birds are frantic with
Her last distress,
And flutter and chatter over
Her nakedness

And her blind
Eyes are prayers
Where she lives
By the boulders
The strong shoulders
Of the Earth
Who is kind
And harvest
Her prayers
And abideth
His time.

Destroyed is the well
Of her magic,
But where she lies silent
And tragic the earth
Pallid in reverie
Stirs with the birth
Of the flowers, the white
and the red that she gives,
The tendrils and swarming of all
That still lives, oh still lives ! 

And she comes from the dead,
Smiling without mystery,
Homeward slowly turning
Century by century,
And all the heart's deep yearnings
In her Being is burning, burning. "

World War 2 Poetry blog supports the Second World War Experience Centre  Please consider looking at their website and the SWWEC Youtube Channel 

Beatrice Gibbs/ Alexandra Etheldreda Grantham

                                 Current Research Projects
                                 Beatrice Gibbs/ Alexandra Etheldreda Grantham 

                                                 

Graham Sutherland : 'Devastation,1941,East End, Burnt Paper Warehouse' . In the public domain Courtesy of Wikipedia/ Tate Britain. 

Thought that it was time to expand about the purposes of this blog. As well as trying to highlight the  whole range of World War 2 poetry that is in danger of being overshadowed and forgotten, it's also important to encourage further research, trying to discover more about the lives of those who were writing poetry during World War 2.  Looking at two female poets , Beatrice Gibbs and Alexandra Etheldreda Grantham. 

The Bomber

"White moon setting and red sun waking.
White as a searchlight, red as a flame
Through the dawn wind her hard way making.
Rhythmless,riddled, the bomber came.

Men who had thought their last flight over,
All hoping, gone, came limping back.
Marvelling, looked on on bomb-scarred Dover.
Buttercup fields and white Down track.

Cottage and ploughland, green lanes weaving,
Working-folk stopping to stare overhead-
Lovely, most lovely, past all believing
To eyes of men new-raised from the dead. "

-Beatrice R. Gibbs.

( featured in  'Shadows of War- British Women's Poetry of the Second World War' edited and introduced by Anne Powell. 1999 ).

A poem that attracted me for its simplicity but also intrigued by the theme of a  bomber crew who are out causing havoc to the enemy , and facing colossal odds weighed against their own survival, find solace on reaching the Kent Downs upon their return. The last two lines are almost parodying a hymn with the repetition of 'lovely' and the reference to 'believing' and 'new raised from the dead' .

Beatrice R. Gibb was born in 1894, and is listed as a poet, writer of children's books, in the index of 'Shadows of War'.
So far have found little else about her but still searching.

Alexandra Etheldreda Grantham 

Have been liaising with Lucy London, who runs the excellent Female Poets of the First World War blog concerning   Alexandra Etheldreda Marie Sylvia Von Herder born  in Germany in 1870, : A specialist in Chinese history and art, with several books to her name . The biographical details in the  'Shadows of War' anthology .mention a marriage to Captain Frederick William Grantham. and for having the tragic distinction  of having two sons killed whilst serving, one in each World War.

From what I can establish her son  Ltn. Hugo Frederick Grantham,Third Battalion Essex Regiment, died at Gallipoli, on 28th June 1915, and is  buried at Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery. In 1915 Alexandra Grantham's collection 'Mater Dolorosa ' was published in 1915 and dedicated to his memory.

The second son  was Godfrey Harry Grantham, who was a pilot instructor in the RAF volunteer reserve and was killed  on 21st June 1942 aged 30 , Catherine Reilly, in her 'English Poetry of the Second World War a Bibliography' , suggested that perhaps  Godfrey was Alexandra Grantham's grandson, but the records available on Commonwealth War Graves Commission show that he was indeed her son.

Crashed

"An hour ago or less this piteous tangled heap
Made up-of metal bits whose scattered fragments
    show
Black trace of flames attacking it with dead leap
An hour ago.

Soared in the blue, triumphant like a star, sheer
 glow
Of silver on great wings spread in spirals
  steep
To rise and climb o'er midnight clouds of ice and
   snow.

And he who swept it upwards- slain, never to
   reap
The harvest of his dreams, nor wondrous joys to
    know
Of coming home, nor wake again. He laughed
   at sleep.
An hour ago."

( From the aforementioned anthology 'Shadows of War' , first appeared in  Alexandra Grantham's collection 'Godfrey Grantham' , published 1942 )

Again  I find the simplicity of the poem appealing. No attempt to write some epic, or to tell some daring truth about the War. A bleak but effective tribute to a son's memory written by a grieving mother.

Godfrey was buried at St. Wythan's churchyard . Repton, Derbyshire. The Repton Village World War 2 history group advise :

"Pilot Officer GODFREY HARRY GRANTHAM, 118749. Godfrey was the son of Capt. Frederick William Grantham (formerly of the Royal Munster Fusiliers) and Alexandra E. Grantham, of Abingdon, Berkshire. P/O Grantham died in Magister L8227 in a forced landing at Dalbury Lees/Trusley. His pupil Cpl G.P. Ward of the AAC was seriously injured. Godfrey was born 24 July 1911 and died 21 June 1942. His grave is a tombstone, embossed with the RAF crest and a carved portrait." 

Repton Village entry

Both Hugo Grantham and Godfrey Grantham are commemorated on the Barcombe, Sussex, Roll of Honour.  Not quite sure of their Sussex connection .

Barcombe Roll of Honour

Hoping to consult Alexandra Grantham's two collections ' Godfrey Grantham' (1942) and ' River Roundels' (1943) in the near future. Also to see if Godfrey Grantham's paintings are available .

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Henry Treece - 'Air Raid'

                                   Henry Treece -'Air Raid' 

                                                      

   Graham Sutherland : The City A Fallen Lift Shaft (1941)  : In the Public Domain, courtesy of Wikipedia 
 

Was recently reading an anthology 'More Poems from the Forces By Serving Members Of the Navy, Army, and Air Force' edited by Keidrich Rhys from 1943 ' This Volume is dedicated to the U.S.S.R. 
Said anthology has some intriguing work such as Peter Hellings ( Aircraftman 2, R.A.F. ) 

FROM DISTANT LANDS
(For the writers and artists of Europe who have been forced to leave their own countries )

" From distant lands
They have come, 
Across centuries held in the grip of murderous hands,
Leaving the bitter mirth
And the mock heroics of the drum
In the clear air
Of this town
A painter of men and women is caught in the flare
Of the great grief of the earth
Like workers breaking stone
For the blood and the bone 
Have returned
Life African fetishes or the burial of a nation's sun,
And under the threat of death
Pictures and books have been burned ......."


One aspect of World War 1 poetry that is not always very endearing is the indifference the acclaimed War Poets seem to demonstrate  towards the plight of  civilians- even refugees are rarely included in the 'pity of war' . The above poem-from World War 2- at least recognises displacement of artists .

Henry Treece, 22nd December 1911- 10th June 1966 , another RAF serving officer, depicted the unbearable tension of being caught in an air raid in a poem that also found its way into the above volume. So far have not established whether Treece himself flew on any bombing missions. His entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography isn't clear on this point - stating that he '"joined the volunteer reserve of the RAF in 1941, attaining the rank of flight lieutenant but serving mainly as an intelligence officer". Already an accomplished and published poet before the War,  and co-founder of the New Apocalypse movement,  Treece jointly edited a collection with John Pudney titled 'Air Force Poetry' , published in 1944.


AIR -RAID

" Here then a testament, drawn from my heart's black well
Like a bucket of blood;
It is still night and the steel birds hover
Over my paltry house on the hill,
Hover and hover. O will they fly over,
Away to the sea and let me lie still?
It is no food
This carrion hunts for; the hand on the lever
Knows no flesh's hunger; the pitiable kill
Is child at the body, or lover to lover
Counting the hours to a kindly future
In a house that can be over or under the hill
If this hell will but pass, and death cover his feature.

Have they gone then, away, and left body still breathing,
The clock on the wall?
The fire crackles gently, the door swings ajar,
The stairs with the ghost of a footstep are creaking.
Away at the coast the waiting guns fire,
At the shadow of death and his terrible speaking,
They turn again,
Re-seeking a prey, or retreating in fear,
Their heartless black hears a black litany croaking..
But there's only one hymn that we wait to hear,
And that is the Raider Past siren wailing....
It's morning again and the baby is teething,
There's a crack an inch wide in the drawing room ceiling. " 

One of the most surprising poems about air raids must be Dylan Thomas'  'Failure To Mourn the Death by Fire, of a Child ' , suggesting that the death of a child is a subject that is simply beyond words. Dylan Thomas was in London from 1940- 1944, taking the second from last verse. 

" The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth." 


Other major poems dealing with Air Raids include ' Air Raid Across The Bay At Plymouth'  by Stephen Spender and 'Elegy on a City'  by Julian Symons.

Overall the 'War in the Air 'poetry has not considered to be of great significance : Perhaps the most famous example of this genre would be W.B. Yeats'  'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' from 1919 with its staggering opening lines;

"I know that I shall meet my fate
 Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love ".....

I use the term 'perhaps' quite deliberately. W.B.Yeats generally opposed the writing of war poetry , and was famously dismissive of Wilfred Owen's work, but its hard to avoid detaching 'An Irish Airman....' from the category of 'War Poetry' even though the poem embodies individual detachment from colossal events.

There will be more on Henry Treece on this blog in the future, particularly his involvement in the Transformation anthologies, that appeared annually between 1943-1947, combining poetry, prose, drama and art.



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