WWII in Poetry

”My need to write war poetry comes partly from my grandad John Story who recited to me his experiences of both the first and the second world war. As a blacksmith in the Scottish Borders, he shoed all horses in his locale for work as the soldiers mobility mechanism. But my dad, Jim Monihan, recalled to me when I was pre-school age all his endeavours in WW II as a Spitfire pilot defending occupied France. In my early years many other veterans of both genders opened up to me at church before the services began when everybody was supposed to be quietly contemplating upon the organ introit and the immanent sermon, but being an atheist, I decided to redirect my boredom and disinterest into chat and conversation with older congregation members regarding what actually happened in WW I, because it was only three decades behind.” “And with resolution our freedom fighters won the victory over constant, open i4ncarceration having felt that cellular motion in their bones whilst fighting in action, the flexing of their fit muscles that generated from a righteous energy. Instead of suffering progressively from inner tiredness and inside darkness, the reality of dynamic physiology was proved by results pervasively because our soldiers knew an increased zeal throughout the war year from their tautological, somatic ardour which discharged in a filtered transmission from their mental models and mind. Exhaustion, in contrast to the Nazi soldiers, hit only physically, generally. “So truth and freedom won because the free West defeated the imprisoning and murdering dictator. No more Holocaust, truly. And no more torture of the Jews or, I believe and hope, anti-semitism. Concentration Camps were demolished or barricaded, no longer to be rolled out as local gas chambers functioning so as to asphyxiate individual and group identities and diversities, seeing liberty reign again in rejuvenation.“ “But it was hell in the air, in the trench, and on the deck. Vehicles, men, machine guns, equipment, tanks. Open cuts, intimacy, exhaustion, starvation and loss. Along with the intense immediacy of the task. The desolation of mid-day, the suspense of the night, the denudation of evil, the tragedy of the feat. Erroneously hard digs, jobs becoming almost impossible, but the work was done unrelentingly non-stop every day, wrenching each man backward as they strove to drive forward, determined, and did.” “But with a single-minded determination, which is as unseen today and I know from politics today that it will never be seen again, world peace was won, albeit at the cost of comfortable sanity. So I have done my best to tell the stories of a few fighters whilst they contended in active duty in the air, sea, and on land. The first part of this book gives poems from Pearl Harbor, the second from RAF pilots, gunners and radiomen, and the third gives poems from other service stations of the war. We owe democratisation and everyday freedom to those fighters who planned, waged, defeated, reacted and won, so let us remember them now with indefinable gratitude and appreciation without questioning why but simply knowing that by their endeavour they did. and appreciation without questioning why but simply knowing that by their endeavour they did.” Clark Simmons Since I was the oldest of three sisters with a mum, As my dad had died when I was at an age young, I thought I’d join the navy to help out my family, But I excluded the black segregation code anomaly. In training our instructors gave us our work, hard, But you could work up to being the mates, guard, Of the officers, an intimate situation, all food made, You would know everything after a while, anticipate. Because I was black, I could only serve an officer, But I was told the job was essential, but felt inferior, Even though I knew many men that were jealous of me, ‘Cos we used to train men in flag control and gunnery. We felt like a mobile target as planes bombed often, The ship got repaired when it was replenished, ben, But one morning after I’d been out, Cinderella Liberty, Another black man came down, there was a calamity. It was the Pearl Harbour bombing and the ship got hit, Torpedoes fell onto us but did not explode, not writ, But they went right into the hull and made our ship tip, Such that eight minutes later the ship was history, a quip. Upon the command abandon ship, I got through a port, ‘Cos I just knew not to put a life jacket on for passport, We got to the walkway outside the captain’s cabin, And then swam for Ford Island, our own safety to win. I was hit in the head, the shoulder and the leg, But was with a corpsman, a nurse, who had the peg, Who saw me to Ford Island First Aid Station, his duty, Then I went to the submarine base hospital, a casualty. My friend Dorie Miller from when I was at school, Saved the captain and his officer, he did not fool With race, when on board the USS West Virginia, But only got the Navy Cross because of his colour. He should’ve got the Congressional Medal, ‘Cos that was what you got for that pedal; He only didn’t get it because he was black, Which is not fair when I pensively look back. Rhoda Monihan