FEATURES
Words A
in War
Not a War Poet – ‘Just a bloke who found himself in an uncomfortable position’
by Sgt John ‘BJ’ Lewis
movement notification dropped into my JPA workflow – Out of the blue I learned that the most part
the following year would be written off, any plans would have to be shelved – I was off to war.
Having served some fifteen years up to that point and only ever enjoyed good times it was time for the tax-payers to have some payback, my number had come up … time to step up and earn my money. I was to join the Joint Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar Battery in Basra, a six month detachment preceded by months of Pre-Deployment Training with the Royal Artillery.
My background as a radar operator would serve me well, my ‘air-mindedness’ was the key to my role as Forward Area Air Defence Operator and System Manager, us ‘Scopies’ had a skillset that was needed. That’s how we found ourselves removed from our usual environment of the risk-free underground bunkers and placed somewhere a little more risky – the Contingency Operating Base at Basra.
The previous Battery on Telic 11 had been kept pretty busy, the insurgency bent on disrupting the base regularly with rockets and mortars, so it was with some trepidation that I found myself with my new colleagues en route to take over for Telic 12.
We didn’t have to wait long to find out what being on the receiving end of ‘Indirect Fire’ (IDF) felt like, within a week of arrival the building next to ours was destroyed during a night-time rocket attack. All of a sudden it was very scarily real. A whole new experience for me and I found myself wanting to record what I felt about it.
Ode to a civilian
Not very good at keeping a diary, I thought I would try something else. I remembered reading poems by Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in my school days, I recalled how despite never being able to fully appreciate the horrors of WWI, their poetry was written in a way that evoked empathy and some understanding of the trials they went through. With those poets in mind I clumsily set out to write my own ‘war poetry’, not just to keep my own memories fresh in the future but to try and give friends back home a better feel for what it was like for us to be in Basra, sitting ducks waiting for the horrible randomness of the next IDF attack.
You hope you can get another day out of that shirt, I just hope for a day here where no-one gets hurt. You dream of a lottery win, riches, fast cars,
I dream of seeing my wife again, and she won’t notice the scars. You hope that your day’ll go quick, there’s your favourite for tea, I hope that the mail gets through, and there’s something for me. You dream of a great career, a position of power, I dream of the simple pleasure of a hot, clean shower. You worry that your toast will burn and the bus will be late, I worry that the next soldier to die will be a good mate. You think that I’m stupid to do what I do, I think you may have a point, but I’m here doing it for you.
12 Envoy Winter 2012
That’s how I found myself putting pen to paper. I submitted my poem to the
forcespoetry.com website – run by the Forces Literary Organisation Worldwide (FLOW). They’re a non-profit organisation to give anyone affected by war, be they Service or civilian, a platform to share experiences through
the writing of stories and poetry. FLOW were hugely supportive of me in those early days and encouraged me to write more.
As my time in Iraq went on I did write more, I found writing poetry was excellent self-therapy, it helped to pause the jumbled thoughts and emotions of my experiences and put them there in black and white for others to read. I found my poems were being read by more and more people, I was getting feedback from people all over the world, for some reason what I had written was proving popular. Folk started referring to me as a ‘war poet’. That didn’t (and still doesn’t) sit comfortably with me, I shall always insist that I’m just a bloke who found himself in an uncomfortable position and wrote some words about it. But, there’s no accounting for taste, as clumsy as I think they are – there seemed to be plenty of people who enjoyed reading them.
Towards the end of my tour I was surprised to be contacted by the BBC. They were putting together a programme for Radio 4 about modern war poetry and wanted to use some of my words as well as interviewing me. It was all done by satellite using the BFBS studio on the base, of course BFBS wanted an interview too. Before I knew it, not only was my poetry being broadcast back home but I was being publicly ‘outed’. I hadn’t told any of my colleagues I’d been writing the poetry - they knew now! I steeled myself for some first class mickey-taking but I needn’t have worried, people went out of their way to tell me they thought it was a good thing I’d been doing.
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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