Love letter to a tank.

I don’t get that big a number of hits and visits to my posts, although there are one or two exceptions. By far the post registering the most hits was’s a story about being a boy on the Rock of Gibraltar during the 1950s. you can read it again, or for the first time by clicking on this link https://bit.ly/2wwLEBp

The reference in the story to an old tank used as a children’s playground triggered a raft of affectionate memories and even a little academic interest! And it is true the tank was a quite wonderful feature of our lives as children of the Rock.

I revisited the story over the lockdown period and was inspired by the many responses to the story to write a sort of poem. not quite Wordsworth or Betjeman, but still……

 

To a Tank

 

You may have had, when but a boy a tank, a toy

Perhaps a Dinky brand Centurion.,

that gave adventurous hours of fun

But we

The children of the Rock

A real tank had we

 behind our residential  block,

a Sherman,

Tracks hatches  periscopes

A 75-millimeter gun

and armour by the ton.

We’d play and swing upon its  barrel

Or standing on the driver’s seat

Advance our tank to glory and to  battle

young Debbie in the turret

 in command,

Would crank the turret round

to face  Europa road

 take careful aim, load, adjust

 and we’d blast to bits our old school bus

Or rake mum’s washing lines with rapid-fire

  from the Sherman’s guns

Sending  radio messages to our friends

and to our  mums

 Or just sit atop its  armoured hulk

In perfect peace unsupervised, without adults

To gaze across Gibraltar bay

At Royal Navy ships and dolphins wild at play,

 

Where did it come  from our rusting  hulk

Where had it been

Was it at Tobruk, or  El Alemein,.

What brave soldiers beneath the desert sun

had tended to its fearsome gun

And did it in anger ever roar

Or chase the Desert Fox,

Field marshal Rommel’s men,

 in deadly war

 

But that is for philosophers,

historians and such others

Not  for the children of the blocks

Who played, such innocent belligerence,

 Upon our precious jewel,

 our Rock