Night, cold rain and fog - England in winter.
We huddle in the officer's club,
tomorrow's mission scrubbed from the board.
One day's surcease, one day without death,
one damn day we won't fly to the Reich.
No one saw him come out of the night,
fifty mission cap crushed on his head,
brown leather jacket wasted and thin,
like the man inside the seams.
He played the old upright, halting at first,
out of tune -- as he said --
the piano, the night and the man.
The bombardier played and we sang Danny Boy
and a dozen more sad drinking songs.
At last, in silence we remembered lost friends,
vanished in flak and fighter filled skies
over Belgium, France and the Ruhr.
Then he touched the old keys
and crooned a lament,
a dirge for the dead yet to be.
His name is forever forgotten and lost,
as was he, on a mission to Bremen or Hamburg
or five hundred places we bombed.
But often on nights of cold rain and fog,
I hear his voice moan in the wind.
Soon I will join my old comrades
at an officer's club beyond this pale sky.
I'll raise up a glass and sing as we sang
in a group round an ancient piano.
But none will caress those keys as he did
nor whisper the words of the bombardier's song.
