Douglas was only 24 when he was killed in Normandy shortly after D-Day in 1944, but he had been writing poetry since his schooldays and left enough to fill out a decent volume to which the editor has added notes. His service as a tank officer with the Eighth Army in North Africa gave birth to his best-known poems, as well as his prose classic, Alamein to Zem Zem. Douglas had scarcely reached his full maturity as a writer, but war is a great forcer of growth as the earlier case of Wilfred Owen testifies, and a handful of his poems have gained anthology status while all of them are worth reading.
There is an introduction by Ted Hughes.
