Soldier Poet in New Guinea

In 1940 a 20-year-old, six-foot-three-inch youngster who had been writing "mood music" in Hollywood slipped across the U.S.-Canadian border. To a Canadian colonel he said: "I am tired of seeing these other fellers push you guys around," forthwith enlisted.

Before he turned up in New Guinea a few months ago Francis P. O'Connell had: 1) been discharged from the Canadian Army with a leg full of Nazi bomb splinters; 2) enlisted in the U.S. Air Forces;

3) been sent to the Southwest Pacific;

4) established himself with his fellows as one of the first poets the war has produced.

Connecticut-born Sergeant O'Connell writes his verse when most soldiers are asleep. In the stifling heat of a rear base in Papua, he dictates by muffled flashlight to 23-year-old Private Stephen J. Haretik of Cleveland. Sergeant O'Connell's theory: "In this war there is too much written about Zeros shot down and cruisers sunk and not enough about what soldiers think. We've glamorized, a thousand men, but after the thousandth hero the soldier isn't anything to write about; except to his intimates, nothing even to think about."

O'Connell's poems are popular in the Army. His long narrative poem called When Death is Not Far Distant (written in 45 minutes) packed them around the camp bulletin board all day long. Another piece by Fortune's Soldier O'Connell attempts to tell what a man aspires to before he goes into battle (see p. 48), is called Soldier of Fortune:

Let nature lay for me a bed On grassy meadow, field or stone; Let me hold up an unbowed head, Outranking those who shrink and moan.

And let me rise when ditty calls,

To guard the homes of those my friends,

For brave indeed is he who falls In view of flag which he defends.

But while the sword is yet in sheath, And while I wait to act my part; I dream . . . until the point of death Shall strike to still a lonely heart.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.