While his literary career was short-lived, Alun Lewis created some of the most enduring war poetry of the Second World War.

His poetry dealt with the isolation and rigamarole of military life, as well as the intense feelings of love and longing he felt towards his wife Gweno.

One of Alun’s most famous poems All Day It Has Rained deals with the day-to-day soldier’s life while in training in the Welsh countryside, as this first stanza shows:

All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
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; –
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees:
Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.
One poem, Goodbye, details on soldier’s last night with his sweetheart before being sent away, as this extract shows:
So we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.

One poem, Goodbye, details on soldier’s last night with his sweetheart before being sent away, as this extract shows:

So we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.

Despite holding pacifist tendencies, Alun enlisted in the British Army in 1940. He became a sapper in the Royal Engineers.

After training in the United Kingdom, Alun was transferred to the Far East in 1942. He spent two years in India before being transferred again, this time to fight the Japanese in Burma (present-day Myanmar).

Sadly, Alun’s military service was not long.

On March 5, 1944, after washing and shaving, Alun’s body was found next to the officer’s latrines. 

He had died from a gunshot wound to the head. Alun’s revolver was still in his hands when he was discovered.

Despite the circumstances in which Alun was found, a court of enquiry ruled his death was accidental. According to the somewhat charitable ruling, Alun had tripped and discharged his revolver accidentally.

Alun Lewis is Taukkyan War Cemetery.