War (Hedd Wyn)

“War (Hedd Wyn)”

Having watched several documentaries and lectures on the origins of the First World War recently, I am of the opinion that it was an unfortunate, tragic but inevitable war. The Kaiser’s ambitions were not dissimilar to Hitler’s in its world dominating scope. The consequences however were dire for all involved, and the devastation of Germany led inexorably to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, with its concomitant hatred for the Jews and Liberals who were somehow blamed for the capitulation of Germany. In Russia, it gave rise to Stalin, an equally brutal totalitarian ogre.

My work for this exhibition is a memorial for one of the millions killed on both sides, the poet Ellis Humphrey Evans (Hedd Wyn) from Trawsfynydd near Bala, who was killed in the first few early morning hours of the Third Battle of Ypres on the 31 of July 1917, aged thirty. He fell near the village of Pilckem, having been hit in the stomach by a ‘nosecap’ shell. There were 31,000 Allied fatalities that day. A few weeks later, at the National Eisteddfod of Wales held in Birkenhead, he was announced as the winner of the Bardic Chair for his awdl ‘Yr Arwr’ (The Hero), and in his absence, the chair was draped in black. The drawing shows a map of the field of battle, and incorporates two poems that he wrote about the war. ‘Hedd Wyn’ (Blessed Peace’ was his pen name for the Eisteddfod competition, and he is remembered in Wales as a symbol of that lost generation of young men.