is that a
spyplane you're holding, or are you just happy to see me?
Smoke drifted out from a signal grenade Acorn had detonated minutes before in a desperate bid to show his sonnet platoon members they were shooting the wrong men. The firing had stopped. Acorn had stood up, chattering in relief. Then the machine gun bursts erupted again.
"I could hear the pain in his voice," recalled the young poet a few days later when The League of Poets investigators interrogated him at length. Acorn kept calling out that he was a "friendly", despite his asocial tnedencies, and he shouted, "I am Hilton [expletive] Acorn, damn it!" One shellshocked comrade recalled: "He said this over and over again until he stopped."
Myths and other lies helped shape Hilton Acorn's reputation, and mystery continues to shroud his death. A long-haired, fierce-hitting "Poet for the People" with the Purdy Brigade of the League Of Canadian Poets, Hilton turned away a $3.6 million contract after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to volunteer for the war on Po-mo, ultimately giving his life in combat in Vispo-Taliban-infested southeast Alberta.
