Edgar Bowers Conference at UCLA > Bombing to Rubble Cities with Textbook Names

			BOMBING TO RUBBLE CITIES WITH TEXTBOOK NAMES			ON EXHIBIT

			owers entered active service in the U.S. Army on January 27, 1943, a little more than a month before his 19th birthday. Leaving the University of North Carolina, he attended basic training camp, learned how to fire a rifle, and nearly became an Army chaplain's assistant because of his ability to play the piano. However, earnestly wishing to return to campus life, he applied to the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) and happily found himself, in 1943, studying French at Princeton University for several months—a period that he later recalled as one of the most significant in his life. It was at Princeton that Bowers formed important friendships with intelligent young men who shared his interests in art, music, and literature. One of Bowers's roommates, Thomas Cassilly, had been a student of the southern poet and critic Allen Tate at Princeton, and it was through Cassilly that Bowers was introduced to poets of the modern canon, including T.S. Eliot, as well as modern critics. At the same time, Bowers began reading the French Parnassian poets Leconte de Lisle and José María de Hérédia, from whom he would later borrow structural principles for his own poems. On weekends, Bowers and his fellow ASTPers would frequently travel to New York City, a short train ride from Princeton, to visit museums and attend the theater and opera at rates discounted for servicemen. But when the Second World War intensified and the ASTP program was dissolved, Bowers's idyllic life at Princeton suddenly came to an end. Trained to be a French interpreter for the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps, he shipped out for England on January 22, 1945, and was soon assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. He traveled across France and Germany shortly thereafter, writing to his family of the beautiful French countryside and the devastated German cities he saw along the way. His unit would move from one fine German house to another, displacing the owners to conduct their counter intelligence activities. In the Alpine foothills of Miesbach, 30 miles south of Munich, Bowers's unit took over a house that belonged to the family of a Bavarian countess named Laura von Courten. It was on the terrace of her house that von Courten recounted for Bowers the bombing of Munich, which she had witnessed. The eerie scene she described serves as the opening of one of Bowers's most haunting war poems, “The Stoic: For Laura Von Courten.” During most of his year of active service in Europe, Bowers was posted at Berchtesgaden, the site of Hitler's retreat in the Bavarian Alps. Bowers participated in the “de-Nazification program,” which mostly entailed doing tedious officework. When Bowers could get away from the office, he frequently took trips through the countryside with friends in an Army jeep, exploring alpine meadows, mountain villages, and local castles. It was in a castle near Saalfelden that Bowers came upon Mozart's claviers, which had been moved there, for safekeeping, from the Mozart Museum in nearby Salzburg. Bowers wrote his mother about the delicate condition of the old instruments, somewhat damaged by rough handling, and described playing one of them. The memory of that moment provides a graceful turn in one of his earliest sonnets, “For W.A. Mozart,” a poem in which Bowers attests to the emotional power of formal elegance. After 10 months at Berchtesgaden, Bowers returned to the States and was honorably discharged from the Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on April 17, 1946. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina, and then, with the encouragement of several of his classmates, including the poet Donald Justice and the novelist Richard Stern, applied to Stanford University to study with the poet and critic Yvor Winters, who did more than anyone else to launch Bowers on his poetic career.			Edgar Bowers with Army Specialized Training Program roommates Edgar Bowers behind remains of Hitler's house Edgar Bowers in front of remains of Goering's house Edgar Bowers and unidentified man at desk, Berchtesgaden, ca. 1945 Edgar Bowers and Florence Tannenberger Airborne patch with head of an eagle Edgar Bowers and Laura von Courten "The Stoic: For Laura Von Courten" Letter from Edgar Bowers to Grace Bowers, July 7, 1945 Letter from Edgar Bowers to Grace Bowers, May 29, 1945 THE POEMS "The Stoic: For Laura Von Courten" "For W.A. Mozart" "Clothes"