11.11

 Of the 'war poets' of the Great War, Edward Thomas is the least overt. His subject is not 'War, and the pity of War', but it was the war that made him a poet, by freeing him from relentless hack work and giving him the time to develop his poetic talent – and it was the war that took his life, all too soon. In his late poems, the war is often a presence, as is, increasingly, the prospect of death, but it is not often mentioned openly. An exception is this tender little poem –

A Private

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors

Many a frosty night, and merrily

Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:

'At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush,' said he,

'I slept.' None knew which bush. Above the town,

Beyond 'The Drover', a hundred spot the down

In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps

More sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.

  In his brief time at the front, Thomas kept a diary/notebook. These are the last notes he made:

'The light of the new moon and every star
–––––
And no more singing for the bird
–––––
I never understood quite what was meant by God.
–––––
The morning chill and clear hurts my skin while it delights my mind.
–––––
Neuville in early morning with its flat straight crest with its trees and houses – the beauty of this silent empty scene of no inhabitants and hid troops, but don't know why I could have cried and didn't'

  The following day, 9th April 1917, Thomas was killed, 'shot clean through the chest', and, in the words of his younger daughter Myfanwy, 'what couldn't possibly happen to us had happened'.