Note: Francis Bloodgood would my father-in-law, were he alive today. In my wife's Elspeth's words: "My father fought in World War II. He lied about his age and joined the Foreign Legion at 17, serving in North Africa. When the United States joined the war he spent the rest of it shooting at young German men no older than he. He was shot and his best friend killed trying to drag him back through the mud to safety. He was a writer who spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of the war in stories and plays and poetry. And in the end the horror of a "just war" killed him. He took his own life at 1974 at the age of 52."
I have gone through his papers (Elspeth can't bear to do it, so I do this for her), I have read page aftered yellowed page of typewritten poems, dialogues, stories, all attempting to describe, to expiate his experience in the war. Francis Bloodgood was a casualty of war as surely as if he had died on the battlefield. I wish I could have met him.
