Remembering the Fishermen who served during the Great War

             Fishermen Against the Kaiser  Shockwaves of War- 1914- 1915 

                                     

Was grateful to hear Saltdean based historian Douglas d'Enno talk about his 2010 book 'Fishermen Against the Kaiser-Shockwaves of War 1914- 1918  -Volume 1'  ( 'Pen and Sword', 2010)

A fascinating work indeed. A vital contribution to understanding the Great War at Sea. The focus is on 1914-1915 with a second volume still to be published.The writer’s extensive use of source material, with clear cross referencing, is admirable. Douglas d'Enno's case is that the outbreak of war took fishing fleets on both sides by surprise,though soon they would be seizing each other's boats. Also that the Royal Navy was at first quite suspicious of fishermen. Initially there was a concern that fishing boats and their nets could get in the way of Royal Navy activity. Moreover, lack of fishing boat activity in certain stretches of water would highlight minefields’ location to the enemy. On 25th August 1914 whole swathes of the English Channel and the North Sea were closed to the fishermen. And the market was in danger of stagnation. Yet fishermen were soon involved in the war. Large numbers joined the Royal Navy Reserves. Others assisted in evacuating Belgian refugees. And significantly “During the war no fewer than 1,455 trawlers, 1372 steamdrifters, and 118 motor drifters were pressed into naval service. Nor should the humble smack be forgotten, for a number were assigned to special duties-.....” ( page 41) Admiral Beresford is given the credit for realising the potential of the fishermen in the war effort. And for those who remained at sea, life became increasingly dangerous. For example at the end of August 1915, the Boston fishing fleet, accompanied by some vessels from Grimsby, encountered German warships. Fifteen ships were sunk and the men were taken as prisoners of war. Fishermen seemed particularly useful on board minesweepers. They served in the Dardanelles just before the Gallipoli landings and in the Adriatic, also on a sortie to Zeebrugge on 23rd August 1915. Former fishermen performed courageous acts rescuing survivors of U boat shelling such as when the U9 torpedoed three battle cruisers, or during the Lusitania sinking, amongst others. But there were also times that the fishermen would not always succumb to naval discipline with examples of insubordination and unruly behaviour being reported. But overall this writer honours fishermen who lost their lives on account of the war, and how quickly they adapted to serve. A further strength of this book is that it covers other lesser known issues such as the use of Crystal Palace as a naval training ground, inflation during World War 1, the wretched plight of fishermen captured by the Germans, the number of Scottish women who moved to East Anglia to work for the fisheries. Looking forward to Volume 2.

The writer includes extracts from lesser known poetry at the start of each chapter; Contemporary work from 'Punch', Alice Brooks,  Geoffrey Dreamer, along with  World War 2 poet Michael Thwaite. Dreamer's work has been covered elsewhere on this blog ; however was previously  unaware of Joseph Powell's poem 'Night at Ruhleben' .  Ruhleben was a German camp housing  a large number of interned British citizens and captured British sailors. Joseph Powell was elected as camp captain.


It's also helpful to be reminded of the work of naval historians from the 1920's who are overlooked now such as E.Keble-Chatterton and Lowell Thomas. From reading 'Fishermen Against the Kaiser' , got to learn about 1918 work titled ' Fishermen in War Time'  by Walter Wood.
Now available on line
Fishermen in war time -text

As a tribute to the fishermen who served during the Great War ,felt appropriate to post an extract from a poem by one 'H. Ingamells' titled 'The Minesweepers ' which first appeared in an anthology 'These were the men poems of the war 1914- 1918 ' (from 1919), also cited by Douglas d'Enno .

Starts on page 81 Text-These were the men

Little they care, come wind or wave, 
The men of Grimsby Town, 
There are mines to destroy, and lives to save, 
And they take the risk, these sailormen brave, 
With a laugh and a joke, or a rollicking stave, 
As the gear goes plunging down. 

Honour the trawler's crew, 
For fear they never knew ! 
Now on their quest they go 
With measured tack and slow 
Seeking the hidden fate 
Strewn with a devilish hate. 

Death may come in a terrible form, 
Death in a calm or death in a storm, 
Death without warning, stark and grim, 
Death with a tearing of limb from limb, 
Death in a horrible, hideous guise : 
Such is the mine-sweeper's sacrifice ! 
Careless of terrors and scornful of ease, 
Stolid and steadfast, they sweep the seas. 

Cheerfully, simply, fearlessly, 

The men of Grimsby Town, 
Do their bit on the rolling sea 
The storm-swept, treacherous, grey North Sea 
Doing their duty unflinchingly, 
Keeping the death rate down. 

Latest Easter 2016

                                                                   Some updates 

                                     Above image is the memorial to SS Mendi at Delville Wood 


The SS Mendi

The Great War at Sea Poetry Website has a new page about the sinking of the troopship SS Mendi on the 21st February 1917.

SS Mendi Webpage


Some events for the centenary of the Battle of Jutland.


                From the Royal Navy website :

Royal Navy to mark Jutland anniversary with parade and ceremony at Southsea
17/03/2016
The Royal Navy will be marking the 100th anniversary of The Battle of Jutland with a parade and ceremony at Southsea.

More than 100 sailors will march through the town – led by the Royal Marines Band Collingwood – to Southsea Common war memorial where a 45-minute ceremony and service will take place on May 31.

About 50 veterans from the Royal British Legion and Royal Naval Association will also join the parade.

Members of the public are being encouraged to line the route from Palmerston Road, along Avenue De Caen and the Esplanade."
Jutland Parade-link


                 The maritime charity 'Seafarers UK'  are organising a fundraising  concert at The Barbican, London , 15th June 2016, "To commemorate the Centenary of the Battle of Jutland and the lives of all those who died at sea during the Great War"
Vaughn Williams First Symphony will be performed by the London Concert  Choir , singers include Katherine Broderick and Roderick Williams.
Jutland Concert-link


                   The Royal Naval Museum at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard open the exhibition '36 Hours: Jutland 1916, The Battle that won the war'  on 12th May 2016. Described as a 'blockbuster' : Stating
                 
                  Through never-before-seen displays and immersive  (sic) galleries the exhibition will challenge the belief that the Battle of Jutland was a German victory. The National Museum of the Royal Navy will present the battle as a British victory, both tactically and strategically.
Exhibition: 36 hours -link

                                                           World War II Poetry 


After the Jutland Centenary the Great War at Sea Poetry blog and website will both start to feature general war at sea poetry from any conflict that is deemed to be of interest.

Have recently started looking at an anthology titled 'More Poems from the Forces- A Collection of Verses By serving members of the Navy, Army, and Air Force' edited by Keidrich Rhys ( George Routledge & Sons Ltd., London, 1943- "This Volume is dedicated to the U.S.S.R." )

Some excellent poetry therein, such as 'The Green Navies' by one John Prichard, described as 'Leading Writer, R.N. '

                        'The Green Navies

"O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-
skulled crews" -Herman Melville 


By Capricorn seas and typhoon
Or Stove hatch death sands their eyes
With a quick salt end,
A watch below in their sea-bed schools.
Only Mother Carey's chickens
See them go; squawk and scavenge

Davey Jones's crews: in two tides
A squid has their blood and magpie
Fish have cached their jewel eyes;
A crab hermits in the empty skull
And big-sea brooms polish their ribs.

Their souls inhabit rats; their flesh
Fell in a hundred ports; speech
Was broadcast in lost winds.
Only a seaman moonraking over
The wall, pipes the green navies;
Can see a coral cross of bones. "

Riding Seaward on the Wave

              T.S.Eliot, War at Sea and 'public spiritedness '

 Returning to sea poetry published during the Great War, but seemingly  to have no connection to the conflict: Realised that I had previously overlooked the closing lines of T.S.Eliot's ‘Love Song of J.Arthur Prufrock ‘ published initially  in ‘Poetry’ magazine June 1915, and republished in ‘Prufrock and other Observations ‘ (1917- dedicated to Jean Verdenal , French poet and friend to Eliot who was killed in action at Gallipoli ).

The poem was written in 1911,whilst Eliot was in Munich. Famous for its portrayal of a male sliding into middle age.

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.




Found an interesting observation from George Orwell's essay 'Inside The Whale', citing how E.M.Forster recalled that in 1917, he was heartened to read such work as 'Prufrock which was 'innocent of public spiritedness' . The angst of a middle aged man realising that he was balding and that girls were no longer looking at him seemed to be a strange poem to want to have published in 1917. As well as being' innocent of public spiritedness', to appropriate E.M. Forster's term, there is no attempt to use a poem to convey what Wilfred Owen would call 'the pity of war'. 'Prufrock' emphasises mundane concerns when the mood of the time had shifted onto a war footing.


Yet Eliot also was displaying an indifference towards the Sea. There is a disconnection between the Mr. Prufrock and the mermaids who will not sing to him. And worth comparing with  Lord Byron's lavish lines in Canto IV verse 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'

" And I have loved thee, Ocean! and jy joy
Of youthful sports was on they breast to be
Borne, like they bubbles, onwards, from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers- they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear ".......

Byron displayed a communion of all his senses with the sea, Mr. Prufrock is a polar opposite in being so detached and the poem is a remarkable  example of understatement.


 A  little known connection between T.S.Eliot and 'Great War at Sea Poetry ' appears in his collected letters. with a reference to 'My War poem, for the $100 prize'.

" UP BOYS AND AT ‘EM!

Now while our heroes at sea

They pass’d a German warship,

The captain pac’d the quarterdeck

Parading in his corset

What ho! they cry’d, we’ll sink your ship!

And so they up and sink’d her.

But the cabin boy was sav’d alive

And bugger’d, in the sphincter.

Letter to Conrad Aitken,  30th September 1914

‘The Letters of T.S. Eliot’ Volume 1 1892-1922  1988

Volume 1: 1898-1922 / revised Edition, edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton

UPDATE New blog launched by Michael Bully, February 2023 Bleak Chesney World relating to Charles Dickens/ 'dark' Victoriana

Vita Sackville -West Sea Poem

                             'The Sailing Ships' ...Vita Sackville-West 

Above picture is of Vita Sackville- West in 1918, by William Strang. in public domain, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Recently came across the notion of 'combat gnosticism' - can someone who has never experienced  being under fire really be in a position to write war poetry? Not sure where the term originated but certainly has come to prominence again a few years ago via an article by one  James Campbell titled  ‘Combat Gnosticism: The Ideology of First World War Poetry Criticism'.

 But if the human imagination is skilled enough, the poet can get to a dimension where they can channel the impression of someone else's experience ? My first response was 'yes' ! Seems to be a unique contention for war poetry. I mean how many people would seriously dismiss Shelley's 'Mask of Anarchy'  on the basis that the poet wasn't actually present at the Peterloo Massacre. But Shelley was commenting on what he viewed as an outrage, rather than trying to convey the experience of being part of a panic stricken crowd being faced with charging dragoons, so perhaps not a good parallel .

Was pondering said point again when looking at Vita Sackville -West' s poem 'The Sailing Ships', which appeared in the fifth and  final Georgian Poetry anthology 1920-1922.I am trying to establish when the poem was written. Looking at the acknowledgements in the Georgian Poetry anthology, looks like 'The Sailing Ships' first appeared in Vita Sackville-West's collection 'Orchards and Vineyards' (1921).

The poem opens

" Lying on Downs above the wrinkling bay
I with the kestrels shared the cleanly day " 

The narrator seems to be in some enchanted dream state, watching 'lovely ships' seemingly gliding through the Channel. There's a delightful couplet or two.

" The porpoise's slow wheel to break the sheen
Of satin water indolently green " 

The focus then moves on to a make believe voyage, away from The drowsy Channel scene. Of course sailing ships themselves would be quite archaic by the time the poem was published. There are references to 

" When headlands into ken
Trod grandly; threatened; and were lost again,
Old fangs along the battlemented coast;" 

The ship then travels to a range of places , 'Thessaly', 'desert verge below a sunset bar'  along with 'tropic estuaries. The image of the sailing ship recedes; another boat must be making such long journeys. But the vessel turns homeward ready to have its cargo examined by 'London clerks with paperclips'.

The poem then abruptly transforms in its last verse:

 " Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea,
But wrote down jettison and barratry,
Perils, Adventures, and the Act of God,
Having no vision of such wrath flung broad;
Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen
The classic dangers of sea-faring men;
And wrote 'Restraint of Princes,' and 'the Acts
Of the King's Enemies,' as vacant facts,
Blind to the ambushed seas, the encircling roar
Of angry nations foaming into war. " 

The Summer idyll of the Downs , the hazards of a sea odyssey, the theme of sailors v. 'landlubbers' suddenly swerve to an awareness of the sea as being 'ambushed' , it's no longer the sailors that are in danger from the sea, the sea is now passive whilst the 'angry nations (are) foaming'.

The clerks seem detached from the reality of war just as much as the perils of the seas. Recording losses due to enemy action as 'vacant' facts. Furthermore, 'Barratery' , civic litigation , can not compare with 'Angry nations foaming into war'.

 Perhaps this is where poetry has a role. One  hundred years later we need media that tries to convey impressions of experience, to stop us appearing as detached as the 'London clerks with their paper-clips'. Yet are said 'clerks' going to be derided for being indifferent to conflict at sea but also chided if they tried to write creatively  as if they somehow understood the gap, maybe a chasm, that exists between their life and those who directly experience combat?  Personally I think that the human imagination should be used to try to interpret experience other to our own even though this may antagonise those who have a more authentic claim.

Links


Sailing ships -text

Note 

Combat Gnosticism 

 'the belief that combat represents a qualitatively separate order of existence that is difficult if not impossible to communicate to any who have not undergone an identical experience'

Have lifted James Campbell's definition from Professor Tim Kendall's 'War Poetry'  blog entry from 2009.

Combat Gnosticism-article 

Battle of Jutland commemoration 1916-2016

          

Update -29th November 2015

Pleased to announce some more Jutland Centenary information.

There is now an impressive collection of on line resources at the newly established website

Jutland2016           with a related blog to promote updates

Jutland2016blog

And in Denmark there is a Jutland Memorial Park

Memorial Park    

And a Sea War Museum about Jutland, with some English and German language pages to be added soon

Sea War Museum







            

Picture of Jack Travers  Conrnwell courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth 

At the time of writing the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth have announced a large centenary exhibition to commemorate the battle of Jutland.

Hopefully one exhibit will the restored sketch of Jack Travers Cornwell (posthumous) VC: The original drawing was made by Frank O. Salisbury. 
(And) "is a 271 x 151.5 cm large preparatory charcoal and pastel sketch which is in a very poor and fragile state and in need of serious conservation.
An appeal has been launched at 

Jack Cornwell

Jack Cornwell -You Tube

A great biographical page comes from the Newham Heritage Project. 
Jack Cornwell-Newham Heritage Project

There is only a further fourteen days left to fund the Appeal.


______________________________________________________________________

Jutland Demi-gods 

One of the intriguing facets of Great War at Sea Poetry Project is the occasional elevation  of sailors to the status of  demi-gods .

Most noticeably in Kipling's 'The Verdicts', the verse first introduces then negates the idea. Heroes aren't made in the heat of  battle.

Not in the thick of the fight,
Not in the press of the odds,
Do the heroes come to their height,
Or we know the demi-gods.

But as the last two verses proclaim.....

They are too near to be great,
But our children shall understand
When and how our fate
Was changed, and by whose hand.

Our children shall measure their worth.
We are content to be blind
But we know that we walk on a new-born earth
With the saviours of mankind. 

So heroes are made by the praise of future generations, rather than the 'blind' of the present.

Interesting to note that Kipling implied that the earth was 'new-born' after Jutland. It's hard to think of a sea battle that was so anticipated by so many people.

Elements of the British public wanted a new 'Trafalgar' , the naval lobby of imperial Germany wanted to test their  new fleet in real battle, and crush the British blockade. On 31st May/1st June 1916 the greatest sea battle ever known was fought. It wasn't decisive....British casualties were higher : 6094 men dead with 133,000 tons of shipping sunk compared to the Germans 2551 men dead and 62,300 tons lost.

The numbers of casualties was hardly high by World War 1 battle standards but the long term domination of the North Sea surface by Britain remained. This drove the Germans back to increasing U boat activity which had been partially restricted in 1915.

Amongst the Jutland British dead was the aforementioned Boy First Class John (Jack)  Travers Cornwell of HMS Chester who in Admiral Beatty's words:

Mortally wounded early in the action, he nevertheless remained standing alone at a most exposed post quietly awaiting orders with the gun crew dead and wounded all round him.His age was under 16 1/2  years. I regret that he has since died, but I recommend his case for special recommendation to his memory and as an acknowledgement of the high example set by him. 
(source 'The Battle of Jutland' Geoffrey Bennett, 1964).

A posthumous VC was awarded. Interesting to hear the citation of the 'high example' . A massive amount of the Royal Navy's work during the Great War involved patrolling and blockading. Many of the public wanted active heroism. One response in poetry was the elevation of those who fought.

This is in contrast to modern day historians who have cited the higher British casualty rate and loss of shipping : A prime example can be found in Ben Wilson's 'Empire of the Deep-The Rise and Fall of the British Navy' (2013) , with the author concluding that
 "Raw figures are no basis to claim a victory,however.  Both sides managed to lose the Battle of Jutland..."

Souvenir programme

A Souvenir programme for Jutland, as if it was a show, was published a few weeks after the battle. Consisting of some 36 pages, there was analysis of the battle, commemoration of the British War dead,a history of the Kaiser's navy. Also adverts for various products such as 'Swan Pyjamas', 'Liberty Soap' and cigarettes which featured a set of cards commemorating women's war work. There was one poem, 'To Beatty's Boys' written by one 'Arthur Waghorne'.

At the time of writing I have not managed to establish who Arthur Waghorne was.

Great War at Sea Poetry website page on Jutland
Jutland

Full text of 'Souvenirs of the  Great Naval Battle and the Roll of Honour' . (Thanks to Tim Lewin for his assistance.)

Souvenir

TO BEATTY'S BOYS. 

Were ye Gods, or mere boys. 
In your chariots of grey. 
On the storm-trodden way. 
With your thunderbolt toys 
And the earth-rending noise 

Of your play ? 

As ye drove in swift might 

Down the battle wrecked line. 
Ye were surely divine 

Tor a day and a night. 

In Olympian fight 

On the brine. 

As Immortals ye strove 

At the gun and the wheel, 
From the tops to the keel. 
With the plaudits of Jove 
When your thunderbolts drove 

Through the steel. 

With our grief ocean-deep. 

And our praise heaven-high 
For your messmates who lie 

In their glorious sleep. 

We can smile as we weep 

Our good-bye. 

How the Jubilant cheers. 

That were quenched on their lips 
As they sank with their ships. 

Ever ring in our ears! 

How their glory appears 

Through eclipse! 

ARTHUR WAGHORNE. 

Great War at Sea Poetry Project Update -and World War 2 poetry

                                 World War 2 at Sea  Poetry -Alan Ross

                                         Courtesy of the  Imperial War Museum  IWM A51414
                                                     The (Arctic) convoy on the horizon as seen from HMS 
                                                     Inglefield  1943 

After some deliberation it's been decided to move the goal posts a little . The Great War at Sea Poetry Project website at greatwaratseapoetry will keep to its original remit. This blog will also cover World War 2 sea poetry as there is some magnificent work out there which gets overlooked by emphasis on World War 1 poetry.

The Arctic Convoys 1941-1945

As the USSR was blockaded by Germany and their allies, the North Atlantic Fleet despatched some seventy convoys to send vital supplies to Murmansk and Archangel via the Arctic . Merchant ships were protected by Royal Naval destroyers, and aircraft carriers. The weather conditions were horrendous needs to be added to the dangers of being attacked by air, by mines, by torpedoes, by enemy destroyers.

Some of the most impressive war at sea poetry from World War 2 was written by Alan Ross (1922-2001)
who served aboard destroyers on the Arctic Convoys.



Alan Ross -'Survivors'


With the ship burning in their eyes
The white faces float like refuse
In the darkness - the water screwing
Oily circles where the hot steel lies.

They clutch with fingers frozen into claws
The lifebelts thrown from a destroyer,
And see, between the future's doors,
The gasping entrance of the sea.

Taken on board as many as lived, who
Had a mind left for living and the ocean,
They open eyes running with surf,
Heavy with the grey ghosts of explosion.

The meaning is not yet clear,
Where daybreak died in the smile -
And the mouth remained stiff
And grinning, stupid for a while.

But soon they joke, easy and warm,
As men will who have died once
Yet somehow were able to find their way -
Muttering this was not included in their pay.

Later, sleepless at night, the brain spinning
With cracked images, they won't forget
The confusion and the oily dead,
Nor yet the casual knack of living.

Ross' work depicts war realistically, reporting what simply is. Never sentimental, but  neither does he try to argue against the war taking place. In fact in a booklet titled 'Open Sea' published in 1975, he wrote

"I can think of no one I served with, who resented the reasons for the war against Nazi Germany, however intolerable they have found the reality.
What I recall from those years is often resenting the sea as much as the Germans."

Great War at Sea Poetry is sometimes accused of being quite static. There can be triumphalism, evident in poets such as Hopwood and 'Klaxon', the sense of loss that appears in Kipling's 'My Boy Jack', the solitude evoked by Edward Hilton Young, Paul Bewsher, Miles Jeffrey Game Day, the poetic imagination gradually coming to terms with new war technology such as Editha Jenkinson or Henry Head writing about minesweepers or destroyers. It's hard to find examples of Great War at Sea Poetry evoking the heat of battle at sea.

J.W.51.B- A convoy

Alan Ross wrote one epic poem about his experiences  ' J.W.51.B- A convoy', which is an incredible depiction of sea warfare that took place at the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31st December 1942. The opening line is startling

The sea, phlegm-coloured, bone-white, fuming


The language is direct and economical. To take another verse.

'Hammocks swinging as the sea swings,
Creaking and straining and sly.
   One bright eye.
Perpetually open, a smoky fever
Of dream in the lamp's shadowing rings.
Some dreams are for ever. '

One passage particularly recounts the peak of the fighting.

" Hipper and Onslow, sea-horses
Entwining, as one turned, the other
Also, on parallel courses
Steaming, a zig-zag raking
the forenoon, as two forces,
From each other breaking,
Manouvered for position,
Like squids squirting their ink
In defence, ships smoked sky
Round them, camouflaging. "

The courage of those  who served in the Arctic Convoys was arguably downplayed during the Cold War with neither Britain nor the Soviet Union wanting to acknowledge their alliance and military co-operation .
Fiction more than poetry had supplied more emphasis on the Arctic Convoys providing the setting for  Alistair Maclean's first novel 'HMS Ulysses', first published in 1955, and based on the writer's own naval service. Nicholas Monsarrat's seminal novel, 'The Cruel Sea' (1951), though largely about the World War 2 Atlantic convoys, features one Arctic Convoy voyage, which was left out of the 1953 film. 

A highly recommended anthology is Alan Ross Poems-Selected and Introduced by David Hughes 2005 

Further information on the Arctic Convoys

http://www.arcticconvoys.co.uk/

Arctic Convoy Museum project

Naval History Net entry

The North Sea -Dawn Patrol -A study of Contrasts

Paul Bewsher -'The Dawn Patrol '

                        World War 1 North Sea photo kindly donated by Geoff Harrison




New to the  Great War at Sea Poetry Website , there is a page dedicated to Jeffrey Miles Game Day, of the Royal Naval  Air Service.

Miles Jeffrey Game Day

His plane fell from the sky during air conflict , most likely shot down, over  the North Sea on 27th February 1918. His body was never recovered. He was aged 22 and a posthumous anthology 'Poems and Rhymes' was published in 1919.

Another Royal Naval Air Service poet born  in 1896, was Paul Bewsher (1896-1966) , and both were to win Distinguished Service Crosses. Paul  Bewsher  held a commission in the RNAS as from 1915, and transferred to the RAF in 1918.

Paul Bewsher's published anthology  'The Dawn Patrol, and other poems of an Aviator' in 1917, which is now available to read on line

The Dawn Patrol and other poems of an Aviator

A second anthology, 'The Bombing of Bruges' appeared in 1918.

The Bombing of Bruges

He also completed a war memoir ' 'Green Balls- the adventure of a Night Bomber', published in 1919.
Green Balls

Both men wrote poems titled 'The Joy of Flying', though Bewsher was also to write another poem titled ' The Terror of Flying', and the poems sit near each other in 'The Dawn Patrol' anthology.

What is particuarly striking about Bewsher's work is his strong religious convictions. He dealt with loss of friends killed in action in work such as ' K.L.H died of wounds in The Dardanelles' , also with the theme of  Winter despondency ' Despair' , but his work is optimistic. Removed from the sea and land Bewsher conveys something quite transcendent as shown in his poem below.

Then do I feel with God quite, quite alone,

High in the virgin morn, so white and still,

 And free from human ill:

Very unusual for a 'war poet' to write such a bold statement of faith.  Religion could be used ironically such as in Wilfred Owen's 'Parable of the Old Man and The Young', the retelling of the the biblical account of  Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac . Of Sassoon's despair depicted
'In the Church of St Ouen' (from 1917-published in 'The War Poems' )
' My spirit longs for prayer/ And,  lost to God, I seek him everywhere'
Other poets were unconventional in their faith.   Isaac Rosenberg seemed to be developing his own version of Jewish mysticism evident in the ( unpublished) dramas that he started before being killed in action. Edward Thomas was an agnostic though arguably a pantheist.

Whilst Miles Jeffrey Game Day portrayed the sea in quite dismal terms

'The North Sea'

"Dawn on the drab North Sea!-
colourless, cold and depressing,
with the sun that we long to see
refraining from his blessing."

From Poems and Rhymes

Whilst Paul Bewsher seemed to relish a dawn surveillance flight above The North Sea. 

The Dawn Patrol

Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea,
Where, underneath, the restless waters flow—
 Silver, and cold, and slow.
Dim in the east there burns a new-born sun,
Whose rosy gleams along the ripples run,        
 Save where the mist droops low,
Hiding the level loneliness from me.

And now appears beneath the milk-white haze
A little fleet of anchored ships, which lie
 In clustered company,        
And seem as they are yet fast bound by sleep,
Although the day has long begun to peep,
 With red-inflamèd eye,
Along the still, deserted ocean ways.

The fresh, cold wind of dawn blows on my face        
As in the sun’s raw heart I swiftly fly,
 And watch the seas glide by.
Scarce human seem I, moving through the skies,
And far removed from warlike enterprise—
 Like some great gull on high        
Whose white and gleaming wings beat on through space.

Then do I feel with God quite, quite alone,
High in the virgin morn, so white and still,
 And free from human ill:
My prayers transcend my feeble earth-bound plaints—        
As though I sang among the happy Saints
 With many a holy thrill—
As though the glowing sun were God’s bright Throne.

My flight is done. I cross the line of foam
That breaks around a town of grey and red,        
 Whose streets and squares lie dead
Beneath the silent dawn—then am I proud
That England’s peace to guard I am allowed;
 Then bow my humble head,
In thanks to Him Who brings me safely home. "