My mother had an older brother – <br />Name of Charles: ‘Chuck’. <br />Think she must have adored him all the more <br />As her feckless father had upped-sticks <br />Before she’d even entered the world. <br />Not sure how much older than her he was, <br />A fair bit, I think, <br />But anyway it was more than enough <br />To have him ‘called up’ in the ‘Last Lot’ <br />When she was barely in her teens. <br />He became a well-named: <br />‘Tail-end Charlie, from Lancs on Lancs’ <br />Who, with the luck of the Irish (tho’ he wasn’t) , <br />Managed to run the gauntlet of the ever-increasing <br />Regulation number of ‘Tours’ <br />'Til he was ‘stood down’: <br />The ‘Old Man’ still well shy of his mid-twenties, <br />Talisman to the Squadron: <br />A living, breathing proof <br />That survival in a battle of attrition, <br />Outnumbered by shrapnel shells and lead-spitting Messerschmitts <br />Was at least a statistical possibility – <br />Well at least you knew it had happened to somebody. <br /> <br />So the second-hand story goes, <br />Some wet-behind-the-ears ‘Charlie’ <br />Wanted to bunk-off base to propose to his sweetheart, <br />So he needed or pleaded a one-off swap <br />In which, somewhere over Essen, Düsseldorf, Hamburg or Dresden <br />Chuck’s luck finally fled the fuselage at fifteen thousand feet <br />Leaving him to fend for himself <br />Against conflagration, airframe failure, panic and explosion. <br /> <br />His spirit never touched down, <br />His body never was found. <br /> <br />One Charlie got wed, <br />My only, never-met uncle, sadly, dead.<br /><br />Tony Jolley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tail-end-charlie/
