Hedd Wyn
1887–1917 (age 30)
Biography
Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known by his bardic name Hedd Wyn, was born in 1887 and became one of Wales’s most cherished poets before the guns of Passchendaele silenced him. He wrote in Welsh about the peace he longed for, composing verse that captured both the beauty of his homeland and the sorrow of the trenches, while serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
He was killed in 1917 just days before news arrived that he had won the bardic chair at the National Eisteddfod, and Artillery Wood Cemetery keeps his memory alive for every pilgrim who seeks the quiet courage of an artist-soldier.