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The Close-Range Gunner’s Lament

The wettest bloke out on the sea

Is he who sports an AA3

And really round the bend it’s true

Is the Matloe with an AA2

Now we of Wolsey (hallowed name)

Of E-boat Alley and Dunkirk fame

Have AA guns that sometimes work

By Hector’s leave and pusser’s dirk

Point-fives forebridge-all stoppage three

Forebridge, Oerlikon-Jag in stap me

Dig out all day, all guns tip-top

Rewarded with, Snap, Crackle, Pop

When we try to crash our swede

We wake up screaming: ‘Faulty feed’

Plenty of Aim-off; not too much

Why don’t you swap your job with Hutch?

Sometimes we fire at ‘Left hand masts’

And then the Skipper starts his blasts

It’s ‘Left’ and ‘Over’ hear him sing

‘You’re porous, HIT the bloody thing’

Just when we’re ‘On’ the gun wraps up

So once again we’re sold a pup

Written in the North Sea in 1943 by twenty-three-year-old Ordinary Seaman Peter ‘Buck’ Taylor, gunner onboard HMS Wolsey, a V&W destroyer.

By that time, he had been at war for almost four years, starting in HMS Vindictive at Narvik.

Sadly, Peter passed away in March 2013.