Oddball
05-28-2005, 07:41 AM
Lest we forget
Keith Douglas was the most talented - and overlooked - poet of the second world war. Owen Sheers explains how his new play aims to bring this complex man to life
Saturday May 28, 2005
Earlier this month, second world war veterans around the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of VE Day. If things had gone differently on the morning of June 9 1944, the poet Keith Douglas could well have been with them - a wiry 85-year-old, his campaign medals pinned to the lapel of his suit, a regimental beret angled over his grey hair. If, 61 years ago, Douglas hadn't left his tank outside the village of St Pierre, if he hadn't run down that ditch to make his report, if a German mortar hadn't exploded in a tree above him, then maybe he, too, would have been saluting the cenotaph on Whitehall. But Douglas did run down that ditch and that mortar did explode, killing him instantly with a splinter so fine that it left no mark upon his body. He was 24 years old.
Link (http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1492915,00.html)
Keith Douglas was the most talented - and overlooked - poet of the second world war. Owen Sheers explains how his new play aims to bring this complex man to life
Saturday May 28, 2005
Earlier this month, second world war veterans around the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of VE Day. If things had gone differently on the morning of June 9 1944, the poet Keith Douglas could well have been with them - a wiry 85-year-old, his campaign medals pinned to the lapel of his suit, a regimental beret angled over his grey hair. If, 61 years ago, Douglas hadn't left his tank outside the village of St Pierre, if he hadn't run down that ditch to make his report, if a German mortar hadn't exploded in a tree above him, then maybe he, too, would have been saluting the cenotaph on Whitehall. But Douglas did run down that ditch and that mortar did explode, killing him instantly with a splinter so fine that it left no mark upon his body. He was 24 years old.
Link (http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1492915,00.html)