Ramsay Roe

I am Flight Sgt Ramsay Roe, and my memories have faded, Of my experiences in Burma, and their chronological order, But into my memory’s deep recesses i have dug and waded, Although the exact sequence of events may be in disorder. When i was just due for home leave on my twentieth birthday On May the 18th in 1945 when I’d done 300 flying hours I’d been stationed at Jessore in Bangladesh, the Indian way With the 358 Special Duties Squadron who flew Liberators I was an Air Gunner/Dispatcher, prepared equipment to drop, I was lucky to have survived since so many had passed on, Along with the Japanese, our enemy was the weather, flop, The monsoon season saw us avoid cumulus nimbus, won. It was mountainous terrain, but our skipper who was Phil Adams Had trained as a native New Zealander in their mountains craggy And on 28th May i was asked to do one more mission, no qualms With Flying Officer Harry Smith, one of the crew was new, shaggy I put all my belongings in order, my kit box and my money box, And I left a note stating i had a uniform that was at the cleaner; And then I met the crew, Jack Draper, Pool, and Harry, the cox, Woods, Bill Pugh, Peter Benchley, and Bill Pinckney, gunner. “Curly” Copley was a rear gunner, Parsons, and three agents John Gildee, McCarthy and Naporalski; and a special person A special agent Reid Moore; so we took off then as regents At about five past midnight headed for the intended drop zone Just at about 06:15 hours, when we reached ourselves the target Near a small village, Klong-Pai, nine Japs appeared from nowhere Shot us down in a noise and clang that would drown thunder’s fret Killed Pool, Draper, Pinckney and Brenchley dead, the war to bare Their bodies were transferred to a war cemetery in Thailand And all the rest of us were injured, treated in a Japanese hospital Taken to an internment camp but treated not to badly, tho’ not grand Because Japanese POW camps were better than the Nazi’s rebuttal I can’t remember getting out of the plane after the massive crash, Only that the other survivors were amazed, startled i was alive; I had shrapnel wounds and burns right down my left leg, ash, But i was mobile, and all of the nine of us loved the skipper’s dive. I got to know the Americans mostly in the concentration camp Paired up with one, a Taff Thomas, who was small, unlike me And we attended the first reunion of our squadrons, did tamp Forty long years later, when I could thank Harry for saving me