Bernie Bruen, 'To A Young Galahad - Thirty Years On'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

To A Young Galahad - Thirty Years On

They brought their screens and smoke machines,
An HD camera and a Dolby mike
And, with a wooden bomb, a working fuze,
Selective lighting and some drapes,
Transformed my kitchen to a bombed-out ship
And said, “Tell us again what it was like.”

I told them of the Galahad,
Of how we saved her that first, frightful night
When, from an acid-saturated wreck
That burned the clothing from our skin,
We worked to free a sleeping bomb and so
Return her life, so nearly brought to waste.

I told them of the Lancelot,
Of how we cut apart her gangways, worked
The night, and through the raids that terrorised
The day, to lift and shift and heave
And haul a dormant bomb from deep within
Until we could return her to the Fleet.
I told them, then, about Bluff Cove;
Of how we battled with the Tristram blaze,
The four of us, to save her too - too late -
And blasted off her after door
So they could salvage shells and mortar-bombs,
Munitions for the hungry, Stanley guns.

And then again of Galahad
Who rocked and burned a pall of blackened flame
That rose from glowing bulkheads, blistered decks,
A signal column, dark above;
And you - for whom we could do nothing more
Than find a piece of canvas for a shroud.

Thirty years too late, unbidden,
Unexpected, unashamed, with sudden
Overflowing eyes, my message faltered;
For, though you never were forgot,
You're long past due those tears I shed for you;
As, in bewilderment, I turned away - and so did they.

by Bernie Bruen

Attack on RFA Sir Galahad, June 8th, 1982