Craft: Drummond Allison

Drummond Allison (1921-1943) was an English poet of World War II. He served in North Africa and Italy, and was killed during a daytime infantry charge on the Garigliano, which was part of a system of German defensive lines around which the battle of Monte Cassino took place in 1943–1944.

Allison published one small book, The Yellow Night, but it came out in 1944, so he never got to see it. Though he died at 22, he was already forming his thinking about poetry and had produced some important work. In a letter to his mother from Christmas 1941 he wrote:

We’ll never know if, had he lived, he would have been a prominent post-war English poet like W.H. Auden. He was part of a doomed generation. About 450,900 British military personnel were killed and approximately 70,000 civilians.