The words of this poem kept infringing on my thoughts as I investigated the unique war monuments in the church of Mells, Somerset, and provided the title for the article: Unicorns, Almost: The Monuments of St Andrew’s Church, Mells, Somerset, UK
Raised on the playing fields of Eton and honed by the Officers Training Corps, gilded youths such as Edward Horner could little have imagined the horrors to come in WW1. Their burnished ethos was soon blunted by modern weapons in the morass of trench warfare in France – this poem evocatively sums up their ilk and a vanished age.
Keith Douglas died at the age of 24 in another World War, shortly after landing in Normandy on 9th June 1944.
His poetry survives.
Aristocrats: “I think I am becoming a God”
The noble horse with courage in his eye
clean in the bone, looks up at a shellburst:
away fly the images of the shires
but he puts the pipe back in his mouth.
Peter was unfortunately killed by an 88;
it took his leg away, he died in the ambulance.
I saw him crawling on the sand, he said
It’s most unfair, they’ve shot my foot off.
How can I live among this gentle
obsolescent breed of heroes, and not weep?
Unicorns, almost,
for they are falling into two legends
in which their stupidity and chivalry
are celebrated. Each, fool and hero, will be an immortal.
