Herewith bio the poet Warren Penfield.
Born Indianapolis Indiana August 2 1899.
Moved at an early age with parents to southern Colorado.
First place Ludlow Consolidated Grade School Spelling Bee 1908.
Ludlow Colorado Boy of the Year 1913.
Colorado State Mental Asylum 1914, 1915.
Enlisted US Army Signal Corps 1916.
Valedictorian US Army Semaphore School Augusta Georgia.
Assigned First Carrier Pigeon Company Seventh Signal Battalion
First Division, AEF. Saw action Somme Offensive
pigeons having the shit shot out of them feathers falling over
trenches blasted in bits like snowflakes drifting through the
concussions of air or balancing on the thin fountain of a scream.
Citation accompanying Silver Star awarded Warren
Penfield 1918: that his company of pigeons having been
rendered inoperable and all other signal apparatus including
field telephone no longer available to him Corporal Penfield
did stand in an exposed position lit by flare under enemy
heavy fire and transmit in extended arm semaphore the urgent
communication of his battalion commander until accurate and
redemptive fire from his own artillery indicated the message
had been received. This was not true. What he transmitted
via full arm semaphore under enemy heavy fire was the first
verse of English poet William Wordsworth’s Ode Intimations
of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood as follows
quote: There was a time when meadow grove and stream the
earth and every common sight to me did seem apparelled in
celestial light the glory and the freshness of a dream. It
is not now as it hath been of yore—turn wheresoe’er I may by
night or day the things which I have seen I now can see
no more endquote.
So informed Secretary of Army in letter July 4 1918, medal
enclosed. Incarceration US Army Veterans Psychological
Facility Nutley New Jersey 1918. First volume of verse
The Flowers of the Sangre de Cristo unpaged published by
the author 1918. No reviews. Crosscountry journey to
Seattle Washington 1919. Trans-Pacific voyage 1919.
Resident of Japan 1919–1927. Second volume of verse Child
Bride in a Zen Garden unpaged published in English
by Nosaka Publishing Company, Tokyo, 1926. No reviews.
Deported Japan undesirable alien 1927. Poet in residence
private mountain retreat Loon Lake NY 1929–1937.
Disappeared presumed lost at sea on around-
the-world airplane voyage 1937. No survivors.
Third volume of verse Loon Lake unpaged published
posthumously by the Grebe Press, Loon Lake NY 1939.
No reviews.