Poetry - By/for/about aircrew

It is quite moving, isn't it? Thanks for your postings as well, Kitty. Good way to start the day.

On weald of Kent I watched once more
Again I heard that grumbling roar
Of fighter planes; yet none were near
And all around the sky was clear
Borne on the wind a whisper came
'Though men grow old, they stay the same'
And then I knew, unseen to eye
The ageless Few were sweeping by

 

Spidge posted this over on the dark side which was the first time I had ever seen it. I think I like it better than High Flight.

Per Ardua

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

They that have climbed the white mists of the morning,
They that have soared, before the world's awake,
To herald up their foemen to them, scorning
The thin dawn's rest their weary folk might take.

Some that have left other mouths to tell the story
Of high blue battle — quite young limbs that bled;
How they had thundered up the clouds to glory,
Or fallen to an English field stained red.

Because my faltering feet would fail I find them
Laughing beside me, steadying the hand
That seeks their deadly courage — yet behind them
The cold light dies on that once brilliant land...

Do these, who help the quickened pulse run slowly,
Whose stern remembered image cools the brow —
Till the far dawn of Victory know only
Night's darkness, and Valhalla's silence now?

 

From the acknowledgements of Pursuit Through Darkened Skies by Michael Allen is this snippet:

...of flak, intruders, beams,
Of dummy runs and how to weave,
Sorties and strikes, and tales like dreams
Which none but airmen would believe.

 

From acknowledgments of They Gave Me a Seafire by Cdr R. "Mike" Crosley, DSC, RN (arrived today and I'm judging it by its cover...stunning!):

They say in the RAF that a landing's OK
If the pilot gets out and can still walk away.
But in the Fleet Air Arm the prospect is grim,
The landing's piss poor if the pilot can't swim.

Cracking show, I'm alive!
But I've still got to render my A25.

They gave me a Seafire to beat up the Fleet,
I polished off Nelson and Rodney a treat,
But forgot the high masts that stick out from Formid
And a seat in the Goofers was worth fifty quid.

Cracking show, I'm alive!
But I've still got to render my A25.

(Apparently, a Form A25 was rendered in quadruplicate to higher authorities, by the Sqn concerned, to establish the cause of the accident.)

 

Phaphamau Saga - along the lines of the Airfield poem

From Appendix 7B in Silently into the Midst of Things by Atholl Sutherland-Brown:

There's a little sand-swept desert
To the south of Pha-Pha-Mau,
Where the pie-dogs, snakes and vultures
Roam the plains:
How they lived was hard to tell,
For this last outpost of Hell
Offered nought but grim stark death
In its domains.

It was known as Pha-Pha-Mau,
And, 'tis said that once a war
Brought some airmen and their planes
Therein to fly.
But the kites ne'er left the ground,
And their crews just moped around,
Decaying as the years went rolling by.

They were wrecks, just skin and bone,
Forgotten by folks at home,
In dreams they had their wisps of heaven.
One might find the place perhaps
Along desert camel tracks,
To see the remnants of that crowd '177'.

Natives say at dead of night,
In the distance ghostly nights
Illuminate the runways and the trees,
While a high-pitched ghostly roar,
Fills the skies o'er Pha-Pha-Mau,
As some ghostly pilot revs his Hercules.

 

From page 163 of Spitfires, Thunderbolts and Warm Beer by Philip D. Caine. Poem is written by an early 1943 4th FG pilot and transcribed into a letter to the parents of our hero, former 66 Sqn and Eagle Sqn, LeRoy Gover.

Fighter Pilot

I know that it will come, but when or where?
In rattling burst or roaring sheet of flame,
In the green blanket sea choking for air,
Amid the bubbles transient as my name.

Sometimes a second's throw decides the game,
Winner takes all, and there's no replay,
Indifferent earth and sky breathe on the same,
I settle up my score and go my way.

The years I might have had I throw away,
They only lead to winter's lingering pain;
No tears call them from those who perchance stay,
For spring however spent comes not again.

When April brings once more the gentle rain,
Mention my name in passing, if you must,
As one who accepted terms, slay or be slain,
And knew the bargain was both good and just.

 

From page 211 of Bret Freeman's excellent Lake Boga at War (which Spidge posted about in the aviation museums' thread), which details the "secret" flying boat repair base in country Victoria (a few hours NW of Spidge), is this poem by Lt Bill Lahodney, USN, recalling a hairy take off from Exmouth Gulf (couple of days drive north of me in West Oz!) in Sept 43:

I think that I shall never be
Much closer to eternity
Than when through swells I'm bouncing hard
No flying speed, controls like lard

Controls like lard, a heavy sea
Bounce one up high, bounce two, bounce three
Bounce four way up, the airspeed reaches,
Just forty knots, oh give me speed

With forty knots, God, even thou
This PBY could not fly now
Oh Sir, that last one got a rivet
Hey second pilot more juice give it

MOre gun you say, the throttle now,
Is resting forward on the bow
Bounce 5, K-A RASH, the bottom sir
Has nought but stringers left down there

We'll raise the floats, but hurry quick
This heavy sea we now can lick
One hundred feet, this PBY
With 50 knots, stayed in the sky

 

The Cat Boats are Flying Tonight

This is the poem I always try to remember and what started my interest in this type of poetry. Again Lake Boga at War, page 150-151:

They fly through the sky with a nonchalant air
With Zeros they play like the tortoise and the hare
And word gets aournd for the Japs to beware
The Cat-Boats are flying tonight

They hang on the bomb racks, a dozen or more
And twenty pound frags simply litter the floor
So start up the donks and we're off to the war
The Cat-Boats are flying tonight

After plugging along for an hour or two
The skipper looks round at his trustworthy crew
The Observer's asleep and the Engineer too
The Cat-Boats are flying tonight

Comes a break in the clouds
And a light down below
The skipper has had it so says "let em go"
And mixed bombs and beer bottles rain on the foe
The Cat-Boats are flying tonight

They head here for home and the skipper retires
And dreams of the headlines next day. that
The fires were visible ninety miles distant - "the liars"
The Cat-Boats are flying tonight

The clouds are clamped down on Cairns like a vice
The Wireless Op twiddles his dials once or twice
"I can't get a bearing - the sets on the ice"
The Cat-Boats are flying tonight

The "RPC's" gone and the compass is swinging
But on through the night the great Cat-Boat is winging
Then the engines cut out and we hear angels singing
The Cat-Boats are flying tonight

So down through the clouds on the old "bank and turn"
And when somebody yells "and there's Cairns just astern"
And down on the water the landing flares burn
The Cat-Boats just made it again

We lassoo the buoy after fighting the tides
Then off into town for a quick one at Hides
And so ends one more of our hair raising rides
The Cat-Boats were flying tonight

Tho' dicing with death every day of our lives
We still find some time for our girlfriends and wives
Whacko! when the 240 hours arrives
The Cat-Boats will not fly tonight.

 

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats

 

A Front by Randall Jarrell

Fog over the base: the beams ranging
From the five towers pull home from the night
The crews cold in fur, the bombers banging
Like lost trucks down the levels of the ice.
A glow drifts in like mist (how many tons of it?),
Bounces to a roll, turns suddenly to steel
And tyres and turrets, huge in the trembling light.
The next is high, and pulls up with a wail,
Comes round again - no use. And no use for the rest
In drifting circles out along the range;
Holding no longer, changed to a kinder course,
The flights drone southward through the steady rain.
The base is closed...But one voice keeps on calling,
The lowering pattern of the engines grows;
The roar gropes downward in its shaky orbit
For the lives the season quenches. Here below
They beg, order, are not heard; and hear the darker
Voice rising: Can't you hear me? Over. Over -
All the air quivers, and the east sky glows.

Randall Jarrell was born in 1914. He studied psychology before joining the US Army Air Corps in 1942, where he became a trainer of pilots. His childhood had been happy, but his experience of war was not. Indeed, people who knew him well said that after 1942 he was never really happy again.

 

Okay, this has me caught up with the ones I've found recently...good way to get post count up! :becky:

The 22 Squadron Lament

From Kamchatka down to Moresby, from Canton across to Leeds,
There are men who hit the headlines, by the merit of their deeds,
Every paper tells the story of sturdy suntanned Gods,
Who came from way down under and despite inhuman odds
Never hesitate or falter or stand asking what to do,
But it’s hard to find a mention of the men of TWENTY TWO.
Down at Airboard where it’s busy, and the seats are wearing thin,
And the Squadrons bound for action, have been picked out with
a pin,
Billy Bostock and Big Wigs and the great MacArthur too,
Rest happy in the knowledge that they still have Twenty Two.
Other Squadrons, new formed units have departed for the fray,
And the Air Force band has played them to the station on their way,
While all along the tarmac, looking pitifully blue,
Stand the pilots and the groundstaff of the Fighting Twenty Two.
All the fellows in the Squadron think they have the right to kick,
The indifference of the Airboard seems to them a bit too thick,
Why, you’ll hear the airmen grouching “should they treat us all
like dubs?”,
“Don’t they read the Daily Tele? Don’t they know about our subs?”
There have been a thousand rumours, we’ve had panics by the score,
But the Squadron’s still at Richmond and we’ve still to win the war.
Every morning just at daybreak when the sun begins to rise,
You can hear the Bostons zooming up into the skies,
And the civvies cheer and tell their friends “These chaps will see
us through.”
But it’s circuits and landings for the boys of TWENTY TWO.
Men grow older up at Richmond and their frame work stands to bend
And their brows are lined with worrying, that when the turmoil
ends
They’ll be stranded with the Bostons and won’t know what to do,
And the history books call them the FORGOTTEN TWENTY TWO.
And in peacetime in the taverns when the squadrons breast the
bar,
Someone’s bound to tell the barmaid, “I know who these fellows
are”,
They’re the Dinkum Richmond Anzacs, but whatever else you do,
For heaven’s sake don’t mention the FORGOTTEN TWENTY TWO.
SGT. ANON

 

Andy, several of those poems are mess songs/poems from the RAF.

 

I wrote this one myself!

Okay, this might be a little sad or slightly obsessive but, believe it or not, I wrote this last night in about five minutes flat. The first six lines came to me as I lay in bed and I made myself get up and write them down before I lost them. The rest came to me as I was writing. Don't be too harsh!

Oh for a Beaufighter

Oh for a Beaufighter, fast, silent and low
With rockets, some shells and a nav in tow
Roaring along just above the grass
Or skimming across a sea of glass
Smoke trails and tracer reach out ahead
Hitting home, the calm is dead
Wingtip arcing across the sea
Fighters up high, it's time to flee
Making it home with fumes in the tank
Clambering out with erks to thank
for getting us home without any woe
in our Beaufighter, fast, silent and low

 

Interesting. Which ones, Kitty?

 

I seem to recall They Gave Me A Seafire was originally a Fleet Air Arm song, and also the Phaphamau Saga. These were a two of a handful of songs that can be posted on a public forum without the internet catching fire.

 

From the 454/459 Sqn website

The following poem was submitted by Norm Gilham - 454.

The Flying Instructors Lament

My pupil is a headache I do not want.
He maketh me to fly over green pastures,
He leadeth me beside high-tension wires,
He ruineth my nerves.
Why, for Heaven's sake?

Yea, though I fly in the clearest of days
Yet do I feel much evil,
For he is with me,
An his flying doth terrify me.

He prepareth to crash before me,
In the face of all my teacher.
He filleth my head with trouble,
My mug runneth over.
Surely terror and strife will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of lunatics forever.

 

Found this on an air crash site that I'll post elsewhere. An English translation of words by Bram Vermeulen. Says it all really:

These young men who lost their lives, do not cry for them,
They are not really gone, you know; It's just a body which they left behind,
They will only be gone forever when we no longer remember them...

 

The old adage is true, a person is not dead until their echoes die too.

 

Lie in the dark and listen
It's clear tonight so they're flying high
Hundreds of them, thousands perhaps
Riding the icy, moonlit sky
Men, machinery, bombs and maps
Altimeters and guns and charts
Coffee, sandwiches, fleece-lined boots
Bones and muscles and minds and hearts
British saplings with British roots
Deep in the earth they've left below
Lie in the dark and let them go
Lie in the dark and listen.

Lie in the dark and listen
They're going over in waves and waves
High above villages, hills and streams,
Country churches and little graves
And little citizens' worried dreams
Very soon they'll have reached the sea
And far below them will lie the bays
And cliffs and sands where they used to be
Taken for summer holidays
Lie in the dark and let them go
Theirs is a world we'll never know
Lie in the dark and listen.

Lie in the dark and listen
City magnates and steel contractors
Factory workers and politicians
Soft hysterical little actors
Ballet dancers, reserved musicians
Safe in your warm civilian beds
Count your profits and count your sheep
Life is passing over your heads
Just turn over and try to sleep
Lie in the dark and let them go
There's one debt you'll forever owe
Lie in the dark and listen.

 

From Alamein to the Alps 0 454 Squadron, RAAF 1941-1945 by Mark Lax. A ditty written by F/L Mark Wishart "Curley" Phillips RAFVR and inspired by F/O Ray Crouch DFC and his crew's running battle with '109s who were circling the lighthouse at Anti-Kythera - the duty pilots who "booked" 454 in and out of the Aegean. The crew, in Baltimore FA468 "R", were on their return trip with some fuel problems after flying a high level diversion for the CO (if you've read about Beaufighter strikes in the Med and Aegean, you'll remember that Baltimores played a huge part in recce and shadowing convoys).

The Last Time I Saw Paros

The Last Time I Saw Paros
The flak was flying high
And lots of little 109s
Were nipping round the sky.

The Last Time I Saw Paros
We flew round Nassau Bay;
But Gerry took a meagre view
And chased us far away.

So! We beat it for the water
With engines going full blast
And we make our way through Anti-K
With a Messerschmitt up our...

The crew got through without a scratch but the aircraft received 26 cannon hits and was a write-off. Crouch was awarded the DFC for his airmanship.