John Jarmain, 1910-44, b. Hatch End, Middlesex. Educated at Shrewsbury School, and Queen's College, Cambridge. Tutor and writer. served with the 51st Highland Division from Alamein to Sicily, then in the Normandy landings, as an anti-tank gunner, attaining the rank of Major. KIA 1944

Douglas was not the only important poet lost during that month. John Jarmain, like Douglas, had survived the North African campaign; and like Douglas, he was killed in Normandy. The 65th anniversary of his death is 26 June. A note to publishers: it is virtually impossible to find a copy of Jarmain's works (although single poems do crop up in war anthologies). I hope that someone will reprint them.

Hill says of Jarmain's contemporary, Drummond Allison, that he wrote 'three or four poems of distinction'. We might claim as much for Jarmain, understanding that this is not faint praise: Jarmain's small number of significant poems belong among the finest of the War.