Llŷr Gwyn Lewis is a Welsh-language writer and poet. His previous publications include Fabula (2017), a collection of short stories, and poetry in Storm ar wyneb yr haul (2014) and rhwng dwy lein drên (2020). In 2017 he was selected as one of LAF’s Ten New Voices from Europe for 2017.
This is a difficult book to categorize. Ostensibly, it is an
account of Llŷr Gwyn Lewis’s attempt to discover the truth about
his father’s brother, John, an artilleryman who was killed in Syria
in 1941, fighting not the Germans but the Vichy French. He was 24
years old. It begins when the author’s grandfather gives him a
package containing a few letters home from John, a photograph, a
last letter from John’s mother (returned to sender, addressee
deceased), and a couple of obituaries from local papers – all the
material remnants of John’s short life – which prompts the author
to try to find out more about this long-dead uncle he never knew.
Yet it is also partly a travelogue, an account of Llŷr Gwyn Lewis’s
travels as a student backpacker, visiting Italy, Russia, Poland,
Holland, riding the great international trains of Europe, often
with his friend, Cynon. As such, it is a typical young man’s tale
of cheap hostels, heavy drinking, partying, absorbing superficial
impressions of too many European cities. Despite the ‘good times’
element, though, war and its horrors are never far away. The author
had been to the First World War graveyards of Flanders with his
parents as a boy, and visits them again now, hoping to find the
grave of Hedd Wyn. Staying in Cracow, he and Cynon make a detour to
Auschwitz. Amsterdam leads to Anne Frank’s house; a visit to London
to the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Trench Experience’ and ‘Blitz
Experience’ exhibitions. (For someone interested, even obsessed
with war, the author as a young traveller can seem uninformed.
Sitting in a pleasant square in Warsaw, he is surprised to learn
later that it has been rebuilt from ruins, seemingly unaware that
the city was utterly destroyed by the Germans during the Warsaw
Uprising of 1944.) The book’s title is taken from a poem by Guto’r
Glyn, the fifteenth-century soldier-poet, referring to his fellow
soldiers as ‘some flowers of war’. John was one such flower, and at
times the youthful Llŷr feels envy for those who fought, who
achieved significant action in their lives even when it led to
death. A more mature Llŷr Gwyn Lewis knows that this is romantic
posturing: if war is such a forger of character, how come so many
veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq kill themselves on their return,
as the author acknowledges. At one point, he plans to write a novel
about John’s life, but abandons it, realizing that John, dying so
young and so far away, is really unknowable. Far better to cherish
the living, like his much-loved grandmother and grandfather. The
original Welsh edition, Rhyw Flodau Rhyfel, won the Creative
Non-Fiction prize at the Wales Book of the Year awards in 2015.
Ably translated by Katie Gramich, it is now available to
English-language readers in Parthian’s excellent Translations
series.
*John Barnie @ www.gwales.com*
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