大象传媒

In the early nineteen forties when the Nazis ruled the skies,
The catalogue of bombs each night became no great surprise,
There was one span of ninety nights - I think in forty-one,
When there wasn't any respite from the anti-aircraft gun,
And the bomb load from the Heinkels descended from the sky,
Our firework shows owed nothing to - A penny for the Guy.
Fire-watching didn't mean a cosy chat around the hearth,
But picking up incendiaries and giving them a bath,
To douse them in a bucket with a covering of sand,
Tin helmets were de rigeur, there was lots of flak at hand,
The sirens in the daytime, when the enemy was near.
All continued working when they sounded the 鈥淎ll Clear".
Underground was not the job description of a spy,
But a refuge for the homeless from the menace of the sky.
Steel shelters for the children, to protect them in the night,
Did not improve the sitting-room - a really grotesque sight.
If your work was not congenial, you had no cause to moan,
The choice was factory or Services - that, and that alone .
Men and women all alike, no sex discrimination,
the Nation's need the sole control of all our destination.
And the, of course, the diet, the whale cuts known as snoek,
(A very fishy kind of meat, inclined to make one puke),
Re-constituted egg, also guaranteed to sicken,
A greyish-yellow powder, not related to a chicken!
And Woolton Pie a ghastly fake thank God for Uncle Sam,
Who sent across the Herring Pond large quantities of Spam
The butchers had a dreadful task to spread the ration round,
Strange bits of meat tied up with string, were often what was found.
There was no Chinese eating house, no Indian to be tried,
No pizzas, no Macdonalds and no Kentucky fried.
But just a British restaurant - set meal for two and six,
The bravest stomachs only could withstand the curious mix.
Our clothes were just Utility, our furniture the same,
If one had a petrol ration, the petrol had no name.

(2)

The black-out in the evening, the homes, the streets, the bars,
Made travelling an experience - shielded headlamps on the cars.
One couldn't drown one's sorrows, to shut out all the din,
There wasn't any whisky and there wasn't any gin.
No cameras, videos, TV , no holidays in Spain,
Penicillin only present for the fighting men in pain.
No machines for washing dishes, all the laundry done by hand,
In the garden, only vegetables, so precious was the land.
No visits to the seaside, the beaches were taboo,
Concrete and barbed wire, where once the sand-dune flowers grew.
And, later on, the rockets, the V1s and the V2s.
If you felt your life was forfeit, there were many ways to choose.
But no trivia, contemptible, reported by the Press,
Just news of dogged courage by the Forces under stress.
The sadness when one's friends were lost, lives ruined by the War,
But, with it all, a type of Spirit never seen before.
Close companionship, compassion, very little crime,
We think that we were lucky to have lived throughout that time.
Universal fellowship, so no one felt alone.
Can we say that, in the nineties, such an atmosphere is known?
Six years the country faced an evil foul beyond belief ,
And those who died were those who brought us victory and relief,
We who lived will not forget that, bull-dog to the last.
Winston Churchill made quite certain that the Nazi era passed.

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