Coxswain of the Cockpit - Vic Gamble

In 2006 Vic wrote about a Canadian pilot (Flight Lieutenant John Walton Saville), who died when the Typhoon he was flying was shot down in Havelet Bay, on the 5th June 1944. Flight Lieutenant Saville was on a bombing raid tasked with destroying the German Freya radar installation on Fort George. The raid was a vital part of the Allied preparations for D-Day.

Unfortunately a plaque dedicated to Flight Lieutenant Saville was recently defiled by vandals, this prompted Vic to submit his poem.

Coxswain of the Cockpit

I have little doubt those young men thought it
momentary mischief,
stuck like rats and rabbits in airfield quarters,
about to half their life spans
& styles. I have no doubt
these young men bolstered themselves
to a frazzle with jokes cocktailed
by companionship,celibacy
and the silver screen of uncertain catastrophe…..

The Canadian was used to bigger spheres
of landscapes,
he had reject-seated his checked shirt
and Mountie mentality
for war zones not yet described,
not even half-truthed,
not even lied.

A five hundred pounder
the bigger hamburger,
not fried over Hamburg,
but rather on German radar, bleep,bleep,bleeping
on portend pleasant heights
of Guernsey...bleep, bleeping
like a bomb not yet unleashed,
though still spinning out an angst of cogwheeled anger.

And when duty called,
he dropped her,
heavy metal spilling down
in sentenced siren silence;
a snake screeching out of her lair
to thud silent, like a passive pledge,a pawky dream,
like a sleeping beauty kiss.

And he, the Canadian,stuttering,shot full of holes
his last icons banging though his brain,
painlessly,
splashed suddenly into waters
rolling out & across
his newly bequeathed blue sea-lady
of Havelet Bay.

Every worm turns,
at every turn it worms back,
a sly freeloader from history’s hold…...
and down in the blue blackout of breaking waters
the instant sadness will be known to all,
except perhaps that quiet Canadian,
once proud pilot,
now coxswain of the cockpit.

Vic Gamble