Voices of Silence (26 page)

I was standing at the corner

When I heard somebody say,

‘Come and join the Flying Corps –

Come, step along this way’.

I threw my thirty-chest out,

And put my cap on straight,

And walked into the office

Along with Jack, my mate.

They offered me two bob a day,

I said, ‘I didn’t think’,

But when they murmured ‘Four bob’,

I said, ‘Come, have a drink.’

And now I spend my Sundays

With Lizzie in the Lane.

I wonder when I’ll get my first

Or see an aeroplane.

I never was so well off

In all my naturel:

You should see me in St James’s,

I am an awful swell.

And now I’ve been to Larkhill

My education is complete.

‘Form fours’, ‘’Bout turn’, ‘Two deep’,

Oh! don’t I do it neat!

You should see us hold our heads up

When the others pass us by.

The girls they all run after us

And, breathless, say, ‘Oh, my!

Dear Tommy brave, I’ll be your slave,

If you will take me up.’

But hastily I answer,

‘I’ve an invitation out to sup.’

Jimmy gets his ‘Wings’ to-night,

Let the bumper flow!

Jove! but he’s a living wonder!

He will cleave the skies asunder!

British to the core, by thunder,

Fearless of the foe!

Jimmy masters all machines

With unerring skill.

He’s the sturdiest of smiters,

And, by all the Bristol Fighters,

He will strafe the Hunnish blighters –

Strafe them with a will!

Jimmy’s booked for overseas,

Eagerly he waits.

Then he’ll give some demonstrations,

And some staggering sensations,

Followed up by decorations

In the Palace gates!

Jimmy’s just the jolliest sport

One could wish to see!

Golden conquests lie before him;

Where’s the Hun that dare ignore him?

Here’s his health! for we adore him,

Jimmy – R.F.C.!

This is the song of the Plane –

The creaking, shrieking plane,

The throbbing, sobbing plane,

And the moaning, groaning wires: –

The engine – missing again!

One cylinder never fires!

Hey ho! for the Plane!

This is the song of the Man –

The driving, striving man,

The chosen, frozen man: –

The pilot, the man-at-the-wheel,

Whose limit is all that he
can
,

And beyond, if the need is real!

Hey ho! for the Man!

This is the song of the Gun –

The muttering, stuttering gun,

The maddening, gladdening gun: –

That chuckles with evil glee

At the last, long dive of the Hun,

With its end in eternity!

Hey ho! for the Gun!

This is the song of the Air –

The lifting, drifting air,

The eddying, steadying air,

The wine of its limitless space: –

May it nerve us at last to dare

Even death with undaunted face!

Hey ho! for the Air!

Gordon Alchin

With the first light, the morning flight

Before the dawn-wind stirs,

Comes out to pass across the grass

Jewelled with gossamers;

Then one by one at speed they run

Until the lifting planes,

Earth-bound no more, tilt up, and soar

To the wide air’s domains.

Now in the swerves of spiral curves

As the swift kestrels tower,

Each pilot swings blue-circled wings,

And in the pride of power

Laughs at the wind he leaves behind,

And eastward at full speed

Where the sun’s rose, cloud-veiled, just shows,

Heads his unbridled steed.

Now underneath, the white mist-wreath

Clears off from field and lane;

Below and far, one long raw scar,

The battle-line shows plain,

And there is need that he should read

As in a book, by signs

Of dust or smoke, what night may cloak

Within the foeman’s lines.

So, tho’ he hear the shells burst near,

Or see the black-crossed foe

And feel the breath of hissing death

About his temples go,

On his set ways he holds his gaze,

Nor quits the airy field

Till brain and eyes have gained the prize

Of secrets all revealed.

F.W.D. Bendall

Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea,

Where, underneath, the restless waters flow –

Silver, and cold, and slow.

Dim in the east there burns a new-born sun,

Whose rosy gleams along the ripples run,

Save where the mist droops low,

Hiding the level loneliness from me.

And now appears beneath the milk-white haze

A little fleet of anchored ships, which lie

In clustered company,

And seem as they are yet fast bound by sleep,

Although the day has long begun to peep,

With red-inflamèd eye,

Along the still, deserted ocean ways.

The fresh, cold wind of dawn blows on my face

As in the sun’s raw heart I swiftly fly,

And watch the seas glide by.

Scarce human seem I, moving through the skies,

And far removed from warlike enterprise –

Like some great gull on high

Whose white and gleaming wings beat on through space.

Then do I feel with God quite, quite alone,

High in the virgin morn, so white and still,

And free from human ill:

My prayers transcend my feeble earth-bound plaints –

As though I sang among the happy Saints

With many a holy thrill –

As though the glowing sun were God’s bright Throne.

My flight is done. I cross the line of foam

That breaks around a town of grey and red,

Whose streets and squares lie dead

Beneath the silent dawn – then am I proud

That England’s peace to guard I am allowed;

Then bow my humble head,

In thanks to Him Who brings me safely home.

Paul Brasher

When you’re out on a long reconnaissance,

And seated alone in the air,

While the ‘Archies’ explode with a loud report,

And bullets are singeing your hair,

Then a couple of Halberstadts dive on your tail,

And both Lewis guns jamb from the start,

And you land with a crash in ‘No Man’s Land’,

Then you and your ‘Bus’ have to part.

Then you’ve got near the end of a Perfect Day;

Near the end of your lifetime, too,

For the bullets are hitting the ground all round,

With an aim that is sure and true.

You lie like a log in ‘No Man’s Land’,

And you pray for the sun to set,

When you’ll get to the end of this Perfect Day,

And day you will ne’er forget.

Now this is a pilot’s Perfect Day,

To see a ‘dud’ morning break,

When the rain pours down and the sky is grey,

And you’ve photographs to take,

And you think as you sip at your morning tea

Of a town that all pilots know,

And you hum as you sharpen your razor blade,

And pray that the rain won’t go.

Then you come to the end of this ‘Perfect Day’,

And the end of a dinner, too;

Your head feels light, and your knees feel weak,

For you’ve painted Amiens blue.

Heidsieck has christened that perfect day,

And the Gobert has done its best.

But the morning after that Perfect Day,

You long for a perfect rest.

Cadet Marchant

Up in the zenith, the fleecy clouds chasing,

Monarch of air in my power supreme,

Looking with scornful eye on the Earth under,

Swathed in the Sun’s golden garment I gleam.

Follow who may thro’ my cloud-splashed dominion,

Uncharted, eternal, unbounded and free,

Cleaving my way across Heaven’s fair bosom,

Brave of the bravest, who travels with me?

Where I go gliding;

Silver clouds sliding,

Dipping and leaping,

My joyous way keeping,

Drooping and stooping,

Twirling and looping,

Brave of the bravest, who travels with me?

Turning and sweeping,

Warily creeping

Into the gloaming,

With night birds a-roaming,

Through the cloud swaying,

On the breeze laying,

Over the moorland dim,

Blithely I hum and skim

Brave of the bravest, who revels with me?

Into the battle’s gloom,

Heedless the cannon’s boom,

Scorning the shrapnel’s shriek,

Cleaving the lyddite’s reek,

Poised o’er the belching guns,

Never a foe but runs,

Straight drops my eager bomb,

Hark to its deadly hum.

Flames – and the crash of doom

Breaks in the gath’ring gloom,

Brave of the bravest, who battles with me?

Back through the starry-pierced sky I am speeding,

O’er the fields where Death’s harvest lies

Still and ungarnered, nor heed they the morrow,

(O, but the tears, the moans and the sighs!)

Proudly to Earth once again I’m returning,

Darkly to crouch till morning’s fair light

Breaks, then again to the heavens go soaring,

Brave of the bravest, to-morrow we’ll fight.

Upward and upward with quiver and whirr,

Onward and upward, our pulses astir,

Higher and higher to heaven’s clear blue,

Clearing the rain-cloud we swiftly skim through.

Joyous and fleet as a bird on the wing,

‘Faster and faster’ we hear the wheels sing;

Swift through the air as a swallow we swoop,

Turn a clear somersault, looping the loop;

Onwards and upwards through limitless space,

Challenge the breezes to outstrip our pace;

Flecked with the sunbeam’s bright ripple of mirth

Up to the sphere where the snowflakes have birth.

Bathing our planes in a shimmer of light,

Gliding along in the silver of night.

Earth far below us in mystery fades,

Ghost of a dream-world enwrapped in the shades;

Clear as a songbird’s most glorious note

Peals of a church bell in harmony float,

Rising like incense to regions above,

Melting away in a vision of love.

Onward and onward, a speck in the sky,

Dimmer and dimmer to man’s watching eye,

Moving through sunlight of brightness untold,

Losing ourselves in a river of gold.

Here in the eye of the sun

I sit and wait for the Hun;

Twenty thousand feet on high

Out on the roof of the world am I,

I and my ‘Pup’ and my ‘rattle gun’.

There he comes below,

The unsuspecting foe,

A reckless shaft from the gleaming sun.

I dive like death on the hated Hun;

Too late he turns to go.