The Collected Poems of A. E.
Housman by A. E. Housman
Excellence In Writing
This volume constitutes the authorized canon of A.E. Housman’s verse as
it was established in 1939, three years after his death. In contains A
Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, More Poems, the Additional Poems, and the
three translations from A.W. Pollard’s anthology, Odes from the Greek
Dramatists.
Personal Review: The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman by A.
E. Housman
A.E., Housman's superb poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young", cannot help
but bring to mind all the young men who perished in aerial combat. You
knew some. I knew some. We are now moving off stage and we cannot
help but hope and pray that others will carry on the task of remembrance. I
drive by Putterham Circle in South Brookline, Massachusetts, frequently

and I note that the wooden sign dedicating the traffic circle to my old friend
Staff Sgt. Frank Ryan is in need of replacement.
What brings this to mind is a letter from a Fred Farnsworth (email address:
FredieF@aol.com) of Los Alamos, New Mexico. He is interested in the life
of his late cousin, Lt. Everett Farnsworth, of Stillwater, Oklahoma. His
cousin and Jimmy Stewart were close pals and used to double date the
English girls who lived near the air field. I should note here that I have yet
to hear one note of criticism of Jimmy either as an Airplane Commander,
actor or as a human being.
Our correspondent says Jimmy told his cousin that he would honor him in
a movie Stewart would make when he got back to the States. He gave
Everett the name George Bailey in the movie we all have seen probably
more than once. Its title was "It's a Wonderful Life".
Everett did not live to see the movie in which Stewart kept his promise. He
was killed on a bombing mission when his badly shot- up Fortress went
down in a Swiss lake. The name of the lake was Greifensee. Everett and
one other were killed in the crash. Four other crewmen who had been
ordered to bail out did so and survived. The plane was a B17G -serial no.
384BG/5545BS and it went down April 4, 1944. Anyone with information
concerning the plane and its crew can forward it to "Vapor Trails".
As long as I am still here to tell the tale let me home you in a bit on my pal
Frank Ryan. He was a rich kid from a very patriotic family. He had a U.S.
Marine brother who fought on Tarawa if my memory serves. Frankie went
to "Cranwell", a lahdeedah Jesuit boarding school in the Berkshires. I went
to Boston College High, at that time a Dickensian Jebbie prep school in
Boston's tough South End. It is still close to my heart after all these years.
We both wound up among the very few Radio Operator Gunners who
could read Latin. (I can say this without fear of correction because all my
Latin teachers are dead.)
We both joined the Army Air Corp in Brookline but didn't see each other
again until a couple of years later when we luckily met on a train back to
Brookline. We were beginning the furloughs you get just before going
overseas and presumably into combat. Frankie went to the Eighth Air
Force whereas I wound up in the Tenth. I sent him a V-Mail from the 7th
Bomb Groups airbase at Pandeveswar, Bengal soon after I got there. By
this time the European air war was winding down. I wrote Frankie that he
was one lucky guy because his war was just about finished whereas fliers
in the CBI had a long way to go.
I sent the same note to Nate Douglas of Georgia whom I had met my first
day of Basic Training and had been to CTD, Sioux Falls Radio School, and
Gunnery School at Yuma. We said goodbye in Savannah where he was
assigned to train on B17s and I was across town at Chatham Field training
on Liberators.

A few weeks later I was sitting in front of a sweltering straw-roofed basha
in Bengal, India, when a mail orderly came by and handed me the self-
same V-Mails I had sent Ryan and Douglas. The orderly muttered "Sorry".
Both V-Mails were stamp "Killed in Action."
Smart lad(s) to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not fade...
John Brennan, editor
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