H.M.S.Worcester

Two anxious hours to contemplate bleak death
At thirty knots consuming cold grey seas.
Action Stations, duffel coats, tin hats -
Below, a throbbing engine room reprise.

Junkers aircraft bombing from the clouds
Brought urgency, then "Enemy in Sight! "
The forward four point sevens bellowed out
Their challenge to the battlecruisers' might.
Tall shell-spouts cased her as she turned to fire
Torpedoes. As they leapt, cacophony
Erupted, brute bombardment wrenched apart
The bridge, chewed steel in vicious gluttony.

Five minutes’ devastation. Sudden peace,
Uncanny, as she wallowed without power.
Miraculously the lower hull survived
But Gibson, Dow and Grant, and twenty more
Lay dead. Doc Jackson's needle eased the pain
Of others. Pom-poms warned the RAF away.
Bizarrely, Junkers' recognition flares
Confirmed the wild confusion of that day.

So, vulnerable, rolling helplessly
She lay for seeming hours. Then nervous ears
Rejoiced at turning screws. By fits and starts
She staggered home, a frozen fifteen hours.







[Published “Memories of War “[Sahara Publications] 2007