Another famous D Day invader was the Beat Generation poet and City Lights bookstore owner and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
As commanding officer the 25 year old Ferlinghetti was at the helm of a submarine chaser, SC 1308, in the D-Day landing on the coast of Normandy in 1944.
He went to jail to fight for free speech to have Howl and other books allowed——while saying he couldn’t personally defend the views and language of the book but sank thousands of dollars into fighting censorship of unpopular ideas.
He died in 2021 at age 101.
“Another famous D Day invader was the Beat Generation poet and City Lights bookstore owner and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti.”
I never would have guessed that. Kerouac served in the Merchant Marine and William S Burroughs briefly enlisted in the Army. Imagine going to war with a copy of Naked Lunch in your pocket.
“while saying he couldn’t personally defend the views and language of the book but sank thousands of dollars into fighting censorship of unpopular ideas.”
How times have changed, considering how the Left is now openly hostile to free expression.
I imagine that Ferlinghetti probably considered himself a man of the Left; but maybe not. Oddly enough Jack Kerouac admired Nixon and had other opinions that we’d associate with the Right. Kerouac was kind of a residual Catholic. These people were artists and their views didn’t always match the image that we have of them.