Capt Brim and crew Alconbury

ODE TO THE EIGHTH The missions brought about adulthood, experiences of a Lifetime, the promise of death You answered her call the mistress in red, white and blue Flew on her issued wings, flew on her breath Your comrades died in violet skies of aluminum and steel. You drank too much and grew old too soon You came to the mother country to destroy the fatherland The tales have been told a thousand and one times But the storytellers are leaving us and you're in line In a briefing room, of the mission in which no one returns At the end of a life to which too much is owed, But has she paid her debt, the mistress in red, white and blue Would you go again I ask, knowing now what you know? Should you have gone then, may be the best question Do you remember? Of course you do The flights of fury, the ride through hell The return to the green and yellow carpet and the last bell You the ones, the carrier of the torch You were the children who rose in the early mist to carry forth the good fight I walk those worn altars of East Anglia now Made of concrete, abused by the plow Each year they go little by little back into this ancient land Rarely yielding the stories of the time in your hand. Then in events marked by a calendar throughout she calls Again, that mistress in red, white and blue Reminding you that time is passing, the years left are few You come again to return to the fields and walk among the ruins To assure yourself it was you the warrior of years ago The young offerings to appease the evil and to destroy its wicked ways Children growing into the main players on history's biggest aerial stage To rise in the English mist and slay the vermin of far away and hopefully return to rise again on another day You never turned back; you went on without hate, And history will see this as the ode to the Eighth. ©Copyright 2001 by Mark E. Brotherton