Richard Spender was once referred to in the Daily Telegraph as the Rupert Brooke of the Second World War. He was born in Hereford on 27 June 1921. After a brief spell in London his family moved to Stratford-upon-Avon where Spender studied at King Edward VI School from 1930 to 1940. An accomplished sportsman, musician and poet, he had been accepted to read Modern History at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, but instead decided to enlist and was posted to the Gloucestershire Regiment. He then attended 163 Officer Cadet Training Unit (RMC) Sandhurst from January to April 1941 before being commissioned into the Royal Ulster Rifles and posted to a battalion of the London Irish Rifles. In the autumn of 1941 he became an instructor, first with 47 Division and then at the GHQ Battle School. While at the Battle School he appeared in an Army Training Film called ‘The Fighting Section Leader’ taking the part of Casey. He joined the 2nd Parachute Battalion in September 1942.

The 2nd Battalion was transported to North Africa by ship and on 29 November 1942 was parachuted behind enemy lines to destroy aircraft at Depienne and Oudna airfields. Heavily outnumbered, the Battalion was forced to undertake a two day withdrawal back to Allied lines. Following this retreat Spender wrote the poem ‘The Parachute Battalion’, which was included in the last group of poems he sent home from the Tunisian front. On 29 March 1943 he was killed whilst leading his men in an attack against machine-gun positions in Sedjenane, Northern Tunisia. Unaware of his death, the Times Literary Supplement published his poem ‘Parachute Battalion’ on 3 April 1943. On 24 April the TLS published his obituary:

Those familiar with the work of the young solder-poet will be aware of the loss his death must mean to English literature… They will know that had he been able to order his end he would not have chosen it otherwise. In “Parachute Battalion” which appeared recently in The Times Literary Supplement, he speaks of those who “die that the great Truths shall live.” Now he has joined that high-hearted company, leaving us all too little inheritance from one who promised so much. 

Spender had one book of poetry published before his death, Laughing Blood. He wrote to his publishers:

This is the last letter. I am off tomorrow, having got one days extension to finish off the book. Now – I will not have any Latin or Greek in my book. It is of poems of now, & I hope they are full of the life, urgency & wonder that is truth, & a bit of cobwebbed Latin at the top can do no good at all. I will not have any dead languages near it. Final. No ill feelings; but I’m in a rush & I had to say it quick… the book’s nett tone is one (I hope) of optimistic resolve.

The last poems he sent from Tunisia were published in 1943 as Parachute Battalion: last poems from England and Tunisia and a volume of Collected Poems was published in 1944.

Spender is buried in Tabarka Ras Rajel Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, his headstone bears lines from his poem ‘The Young Soldier’:

In high proud exultation
Let us repay
Laughing blood with spilt

Richard Spender’s Poems:

Resources for Richard Spender

‘The Fighting Section Leader’ Army Training Film

The Laughing Cavalier: Collected Poems of Richard Spender, edited by Richard Pearson with Perry Mills, Waterloo Press, 2017 ISBN 978-1-906742-83-6 (Available from https://www.shakespearesschoolroom.org/)