Actors Waiting In The Wings Of Europe   Actors waiting in the wings of Europe we already watch the lights on the stage and listen to the colossal overture begin. For us entering at the height of the din it will be hard to hear our thoughts, hard to gauge how much our conduct owes to fear or fury.   Everyone, I suppose, will use these minutes to look back, to hear music and recall what we were doing and saying that year during our last few months as people, near the sucking mouth of the day that swallowed us all into the stomach of a war. Now we are in it   and no more people, just little pieces of food swirling in an uncomfortable digestive journey, what we said and did then has a slightly fairytale quality. There is an excitement in seeing our ghosts wandering...
(The final stanza of this poem is incomplete.) Keith Douglas

D-Day and death On 6 April, he was moved to a top-security camp for final training in sea-borne invasion. Exactly two months later, he was in command of a tank troop in the main assault on Gold Beach in Normandy. As he waited to embark on the journey across the Channel, he wrote 'Actors waiting in the wings of Europe'. He never finished the poem. The regiment helped liberate Bayeux and then, on D-Day + 3, arrived outside the little village of St Pierre. The 24-year-old Douglas and a comrade left their tank and walked towards the village, which was full of Germans. A mortar shell exploded directly above his head, killing him instantly without leaving a mark on his body. The chaplain buried him by a hedge near where he died. from www.channel4.com/history/microsites/S/soldier_poets/biog_douglas.html

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