06/06/2024
It’s the anniversary of D-Day, 80 years ago.
I read a book recently, called Brothers in Arms, by a historian named James Holland. It’s factual, but very readable. It’s about the Sherwood Rangers tank regiment ‘from D-Day to VE Day’, and I won’t tell you how good I think it is, I just recommend you find out for yourself. I’ve owned three copies, I’ve loaned each of them out, and none has come back, so that gives you a clue.
Anyway, big coincidence: on reading the book, one of the tank commanders is killed shortly after D-Day, June 9th to be precise. The advance of his company was stalled on high ground and he dismounted to scout ahead. He was exposed to enemy mortar fire, and that was that. His name was Keith Douglas.
Keith Douglas? I’ve heard that name before, I thought to myself. A rummage through my bookshelves bore fruit. He was a poet whose war poetry is considered some of the best of WWII. But I knew him for ‘Canoe’, a poem he wrote in 1940 probably just after signing up and before being posted to North Africa. Here it is.
Canoe by Keith Douglas, 1940
Well, I am thinking this may be my last
summer, but cannot lose even a part
of pleasure in the old-fashioned art
of idleness. I cannot stand aghast
at whatever doom hovers in the background:
while grass and buildings and the somnolent river
who know they are allowed to last forever,
exchange between them the whole subdued sound
of this hot time. What sudden fearful fate
can deter my shade wandering next year
from a return? Whistle and I will hear
and come again another evening, when this boat
travels with you alone toward Iffley:
as you lie looking up for thunder again,
this cool touch does not betoken rain;
it is my spirit that kisses your mouth lightly.
By the end I am almost breathless with grief. He knew what was coming and it’s as though he has foreseen his own death; but I think the poem would be just as powerful if he’d returned from the war, run a peacetime business, and died of old age.
Douglas was the kind of person to head toward maximum danger, and contrived a return to Europe from the Western Desert so he wouldn’t miss D-Day. In North Africa, he’d written ‘Vergissmeinnicht’, worth looking up as an unforgettable study in the contemplation of death but also as an illustration, when compared to ‘Canoe’, of how the world had moved from peace to war.
What does this have to do with wine? Nothing, except that a glass of something serious is good to have to hand when you take a few moments to read poems like these. The next post will feature actual wine.
