VP-91 Up-Floats
Contributed by George B. Winter pbycat@bellsouth.net
December 25, 1942
Christmas Patrol by ENS John A. Hayes
All those who read, please take heed,
Meter and ryhm are not guranteed
...
Christmas comes but once a year
And fills us full of Christmas cheer,
(Authors note: $4.30 per bottle, plus tax)
And while this day it seems to me,
Should be spent quite leisurely,
Were fighting the Japs in a long, hard war,
and can't afford to relax anymore.
...
So, too damned early this Christmas morning,
Ten men were awakened without warning,
On with our trousers, on with our shoes,
We greet the morning with the usual blues.
For it's work, work, work, just to earn our pay,
And there's always work to do, come whatever may.
...
So out on patrol we fly today,
Fourteen hundred the same old way,
Atwell and Mather in the cockpit,
at the radio, Young will sit,
I'll figure the course and Koons what we drifted,
While up to the tower, Carter is lifted,
O'Melley in one bunk, Zoot Suit in another,
Drop off to sleep like Morpheu's brother,
Adams and Thomas, by the fifties alert,
Are scanning the seas and dreaming of Gert.
...
This is our crew as we all set,
Aboard our big, two-engined Cat,
Awaiting take-off time to come,
When we would hear our motors hum.
A shove to the throttles and off we go,
To fly away, but oh! how slow,
Our course is picked - a line on the chart,
Were in the air and ready to start.
Rain squalls and fronts and beautiful clouds,
Like epheral figures wrapped in shrouds,
Are all we see for three hundred miles,
As we fly on our course, Young twirling his dials.
...
Then all of a sudden on the distant horizon,
We see a sight that we keep our eyes on.
An island? An atoll? Quite large or small?
It appears from nowhere behind a squall.
We check our course and pray to God,
That this is no solid piece of sod.
For if it is, then were well off course,
And might, like the Army, have to use Morse.
But our fears are needless, it is only a cloud,
Which, heavy with rain, was greatly bowed.
"VP-91 Up-Float Stories Summary Page"
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