War Poetry

Poems written during the First World War, and the poets who wrote them – for example, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke – tend to be far more widely known and read than those written during the Second World War. I believe that even the term ‘war poet’ first came into use during the First World War, but I think few can name any war poets writing from 1939-45. In 1941, Robert Graves – another of the poets of the ‘Great War’ – even gave a radio talk entitled ‘Why has this War produced no War Poets?’.

On this section of pages in Hill107.net I would like to reproduce some of the poetry written about the Battles of Arnhem and Crete – both those poems written at the time, often by servicemen on active service, and any that I can find that have been written since – such as ‘Over the Bridge’ by W.S.Vernon. I will also, where possible, try and include any biographical details of the poets that I can discover.

As is usual with this site it will probably take me some time to build up a substantial collection of material for these pages…I am looking for poems wherever I can, preferably without directly copying any already published on the web! If anyone has or knows of any poems I can add, even unpublished ones, I would be grateful to hear from them.