Archibald MACLEISH. Born May 7, 1892. Poet, playwright, Librarian of Congress, & Assistant Secretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt. Born in Glencoe, Illinois. During the war MacLeish first enlisted as a private in the Yale Mobile Hospital Unit & sailed to France in August 1917. His first book of poems, Tower of Ivory , was published in December of that year. Early in 1918 he transfered to the U.S. 146th Field Artillery and on June 30th was ordered to the Front as commander of Battery B of the 146th, partaking in the action at Chateau Thierry. Before that battle's end, however, he was ordered stateside to serve as a gunnery instructor at Camp Meade for the rest of the war. MacLeish lost a brother, Kenneth MacLeish, a Sopwith Camel pilot flying with the R.A.F., who was shot down in October 1918 over Belgium. A number of Archibald's wartime poems were published in a memorial volume of his brother's war letters published by their mother in 1919, entitled simply Kenneth.

MacLeish's first volume of poetry, Tower of Ivory, appeared late in 1917 shortly after he had left for France and World War I to serve in the Yale Mobile Hospital Unit. He soon transferred to artillery school and eventually saw action in the second battle of the Marne, commanding Battery B of the 146th Field Artillery. He was then ordered back to the United States to instruct draftees in artillery use and was there, a first lieutenant, when the war ended. MacLeish became embittered toward the war when his brother Ken, a fighter pilot, died in combat, but this disillusionment (best expressed in the poem "Memorial Rain" [1926]) would not prevent his appreciating the need to oppose fascism in the thirties.