Poem

Written during the First World War, published in the first RAF YEARBOOK and foreshadowing the Second World War:

THE NIGHT BOMBERS
by Captain Paul Bewsher, DSC

Dusk is our dawn, and midnight is our noon;
And for the sun we have the silver moon;
We love the darkness, and we hate the light;
For we are wedded to the gloomy night.

When in the East the evening stars burn clear
We know our time of toil is drawing near;
For as the evening deepens in the West
It brings an ending to our day-long rest.

One after one we slip into the gloom,
And through the dusk like great cockchafers boom;
High in the stars you hear our mournful cry
As we sail onward through the sapphire sky.

The twilight shadows welcome in our day;
The silver dawn will hurry it away.
The golden stars act as a changeless guide -
The gloomy skies our wanderings will hide.

The Rhenish cities hear our throbbing hum,
And o'er the Belgian coast we go and come.
From Zeebrugge to Metz our name is cursed,
At every township where our bombs have burst.

The cunning searchlights haunt the midnight skies,
Where chains of emerald balls of fire rise,
To mingle with the spark of bursting shells -
High in the darkness where the bomber dwells !

Across whole countries we move to and fro
As on our restless pilgrimage we go:
With tanks filled up with petrol and with oil,
With loaded bomb-racks - all the night we toil.

We know the meaning of the lights which shine
Upon the world beneath - each is a sign,
Which tells us of some dim and frightened town,
Which dreads to hear our bombs fall whistling down.

Or of some railway junction full of dread,
Whose workers hear us thunder overhead,
And darken every lamp - that we may pass
And leave no twisted rails and shattered glass.

We know the meaning of the sudden glare
Of dazzling light which blossoms in the air.
For us the green and scarlet rockets blaze
And whisper urgent secrets through the haze.

The dials with their phosphorescent face
Record our passage through the star-lit space;
Our height, our speed, the lapse of time is told
By steady fingers, calculating, cold.

Above a strange and darkened world we ride
And over dim mysterious forests glide;
When we are silent, we can move unknown;
Our only warning is our engines' drone.

* * * * *

Dusk is our dawn, and midnight is our noon;
And for the sun we have the silver moon;
We love the darkness, and we hate the light;
For we are wedded to the gloomy night.

Dear Hugh,
Thank you for sharing this poem; I found some of it quite evocative, even beautiful...
The following is from Martin Middlebrook's THE NUREMBURG RAID (William Morrow & Company, 1974) (BTW, it was Middlebrook who also gave us THE FIRST DAY ON THE SOMME):
{the very last passage from chapter 3, "Bomber Command"}
"How many had survived? Based on the overall 1939-45 casualty figures for both aircraft and aircrews, the table below is an estimate of what happened to any 100 aircrew who first joined up into heavybomber crews at an Operatinal Training Unit and for whom the war lasted long enough for them to serve the full cycle of service with Bomber Command.
Killed on operations 51
Killed in crashes in England 9
Seriously injured in crashes 3
Prisoners-of-war (some injured) 12
Shot down but evaded capture 1
Survived unharmed 24"