Francis Fowler Hogan (1896-1918)

Of all the World War I dead listed on the Peabody Memorial to Soldiers, located at the former Peabody High School (now Obama Academy), Francis Fowler Hogan appears to be one of the few who had already made an impact in the world outside of immediate family and friends.
Hogan was born in Pittsburgh on Nov. 13, 1896, the son of Thomas T. Hogan, a mechanical engineer, and Emma Sergeant Hogan. He had one older sister, Ruth Hogan Wildman. In 1900, the family lived at 730 N. Euclid Ave. Thomas died in 1908, just one day before young Francis turned eleven.
While a student at Peabody High School, Hogan was very active in extracurriculars, including the student newspaper, debate team, drama club, and the literary society. Many of his poems and short stories were first published in school publications during these years. His poetry includes such titles as “A Ballad,” “The Optimist,” “To Be or Not to Be,” “Basic Wretch I Envy You, “Referring to the Classics,” and “Ah Me.” There were at least two humor pieces, “To Whom it May Concern” and “Bluffing Backwards,” both from 1915. Short stories include “The Folly of the Fool” (1914), “The Insurrection,” (1915), and “How Would You Feel About It?” (1915). In an eerie foreshadowing, the latter story tells of a soldier who is fatally wounded by a bayonet.
Hogan was so prolific he was gently ribbed in a fellow student’s poem. In a piece called “To Francis H,” Margery Davis observes: “I turned one page, This no jokin’, There was written, ‘Francis Hogan.’”
Hogan also met with notable success on the stage. In a 1915 production of “The Magistrate,” Hogan was selected out for particular praise: “Francis Hogan, as Col. Lukin, a brusque, excitable, retired army officer, was a brilliant spot in the evening’s performance.”
After graduating with honors from Peabody in 1916, Hogan was admitted to the new School of Drama at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). In July 1917—two months after the U.S. declared war on Germany—Hogan enlisted in the U.S. Army; he was assigned to Company M, 4th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division.
Even as a soldier overseas, Hogan was still getting his literary work published, with five of his poems appearing in “Carnegie Tech War Verse” in 1918.
Just eight months before he died, Hogan’s poem, “Fulfilled,” was published in The New Republic—an essay by George Orwell appears on the same page. The poem was reportedly written while Hogan was aboard the troop transport heading to France. The poem was well received, and later included in the publication “The Poets of the Future - A College Anthology for 1917-1918.”
During the Aisne-Marne Offensive, Hogan was sent out to deliver an important message to a commanding officer then holed up in a 15th-century church in Gland. After accomplishing his mission, he connected with an old Pittsburgh friend, fellow poet William Hervey Allen, who was then recovering from serious injuries. According to Allen’s later reminiscences, the two of them “peered into each other’s faces in the dark and sat down on a stone together and had a close talk.” They vowed they would meet again, but that never came to pass. As Allen lamented, “I had an impulse to take Frank with me, but I only shook hands with him….I never saw him again. He was a brilliant and promising poet. He was killed in the Argonne in October a few days before the armistice.”
Hervey Allen survived the war, and later published a sonnet called “Soldier-Poet, dedicated to Francis Fowler Hogan.” The poem appears in Allen’s 1921 book of verse, “Wampum and Old Gold”, published as part of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Allen also dedicated the book to Hogan, and reprinted Hogan’s “Fulfilled.” In “Soldier-Poet,” Allen mourned the loss of his friend and the premature spilling of his blood, all because of the “Hot lips of Liberty that kiss men cold.” Given the book’s success, Hogan’s name was preserved in some small way in the postwar literary world.
Allen’s belief in Hogan’s literary gifts never wavered. As he declared in a 1927 letter, “I am quite certain that he was one of the great losses that this country sustained and does not know about.”
A poem entitled “The Adventure” appears to be the last work that Francis Fowler Hogan ever composed. It was included in a letter to his mother, Emma Sergeant Hogan. She later shared it with the Pittsburgh Dispatch in November 1918.

I have found a cave.
Dark and very deep;
Who may know what wanders
In the cannon sleep?

Maybe there are gems
And a heap of gold;
Maybe sacred volumes
Stored there of old.

Maybe there are poppies
Which the gnomes hoard;
Bit of dragon skin,
Or a broken sword.

Or a queen enchanted
Whom we may free;
Maybe only death –
Come, let us see.

Francis Fowler Hogan died Oct. 17, 1918, and was buried at Homewood Cemetery after his body was returned to the U.S. in 1921.