Blood Waggon, Bomber Command 1944 (So I’ve Been Told) Poem by stephen west

“Here they come”, the young nurse shouts. “Well, some of them”, she sighs.
The ambulance driver then declares, “Them’s all mad them that flys”.

The driver, a conshie from Gloucester, and the nurse, just twenty, from Leeds.
The wagon tips and bucks and rolls as over the grass it speeds..

The driver, allowed discretion, ignores the first bomber to land.
It’s cut up, but still complete, and there are bigger problems to hand.

Number three is billowing smoke, tilting all over the blue.
Then flops to the tarmac, the wagon’s there, and fire tender too.

Meanwhile, in the first plane landed, nobody left to breathe.
Not even the pilot who brought her home. He is on permanent leave.

The nurse drags corpses from a plane, killed by flak and flames.
In old age she will realise why she never learned their names