A second lieutenant in the 8th Air Force, Edward Field served in Europe as a navigator for heavy bombers. During the period he was flying missions over Germany, he frequented the Officers’ Club in the evenings to relax and there met Coman Leavenworth, his “first poet ever,” and he soon began writing poetry himself. After the war, Field’s first published poem appeared in London’s Poetry Quarterly, but he never saw the issue containing it until a friend tracked down a copy for him almost six decades later. It was not until 1963 that his first collection of poetry, Stand Up, Friend, With Me, was published and was chosen as the year’s Lamont Poetry Selection.
“World War II,” which appeared in 1967, looks back a quarter of a century, remembering those who died and recalling the “time I believed in being heroic, in saving the world, / even if, when opportunity knocked, / I instinctively chose survival.” In a recent interview, Field summarized the background of the poem:
The European war ended just before I completed my tour of duty. On twenty-five missions, I'd helped bomb numerous historic cities. I had five planes destroyed by flak under me. That meant forced landings at any airport we could get to, but once, we had to ditch our plane in the North Sea, as I've described in a poem called, “World War II.”
