93-Year-Old World War II Purple Heart Recipient Publishes First Book

NEW YORK, November 12, 2018 (Newswire.com) - ​In 93-year-old Herbert Engelhardt’s debut poetry collection World War II Poetry: Memories of an Ordinary Soldier, World War II is made vivid for a new generation with clarity and conscience. The Purple-Heart veteran and poet writes of himself as a Morse Code-reading radio operator as well as those who’ve been forgotten: the frozen foot soldiers in France and Germany; the often-targeted flamethrowers in the Pacific Theater: “Tell yourself/ It’s not your fault/ When someone’s luck runs out.” Over 90 clear-eyed poems and a modest autobiography masterfully jump from suburban New Jersey to the Deep South to Okinawa and back again, piercing through any glorified myths with stories of the mundane, the savage, the unfair, and a soldier’s first kiss. Ordinary Soldier is a non-partisan history lesson from a dependable poet whose sincerity rings crucial in the divisive present.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tell yourself/ It's not your fault/ When someone's luck runs out.

Herbert Engelhardt, Author

Herbert Engelhardt was born in New Jersey in 1925. He served in the Pacific Theater of World War II from 1943 to 1946 and was awarded the Purple Heart in the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945. He received his BA and MBA from Harvard in 1949 and 1951, respectively. He was employed in industry marketing, finance, and management from 1951 to 1981 and was Professor at NYU Stern School of Business Administration from 1982 to 2003. He started writing poetry at age 75 and has written more than 3,000 of them. He’s been published at Harvard Review Online, Locuspoint, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He has lived in New York’s Greenwich Village since 1952.

Source: Herbert Engelhardt