The Black Bard of Pilckem

Send us Fan MailOn the 31st July 1917, the third battle of Ypres, or the Battle of Passchendaele as it is more commonly known began.  Near the small village of Boesinghe, men of the Welsh division went into action at 3.50 am with the objective of capturing the hamlet ofPilckem.  As they ran the gauntlet of machine guns from Wood 15 and Artillery Wood, they fought up the ridge and by 9.30 am had captured Pilckem and were close to the Steenbeke stream beyond the village.While largely a successful operation, casualties were heavy, amongst them a shepherd's son from Snowdonia called Ellis Humphrey Evans, more commonly known by his Bardic name, Hedd Wyn.  A prolific poet and possibly the greatest Welsh language poet ever, he was a committed pacifist, only joining the Army through conscription.  By the time his poem "The Hero" published under the pseudonym Fleur de Lys won the 1917 National Eisteddfod of Wales, Evans was already dead, having been hit in the stomach by an artillery shell. We walk the battlefield of Pilckem, visit the magnificent Welsh memorial garden, and discover why Evans came to be known as "The Black Bard".