Payback! Poem by David Lewis Paget

We'd flown on up from Townsville
To patrol the northern gulf,
It was just a routine flight, and we
Felt lazy, after lunch,
With a pale blue sky above us
And an azure sea below,
I just felt like turning turtle,
Napping out, while things were slow.

I remember that the Beatles came
Across the intercom,
Sang a song from Sergeant Peppers
Of some Lonely Hearts Club Band,
I was down there in the nose cone
Strapped and buckled to my seat,
Feeling warm and safe and cozy
In the tropics, in the heat.

While down in Carpentaria
The water was sublime,
We'd flown this great expanse before
A hundred, thousand times
Looking out for those illegals,
Indonesian fishing boats,
Fishing in our charted waters,
Stealing fish from round our coast.

There were seven in the Neptune,
We were short on crew that day,
Just the Captain and co-pilot
And a Navigator, Ray,
The Rad-tech keeping cover
On the sonar, 'Jezebel',
The others taking turns on M.A.D.,
The stinger in the tail.

While I was the Observer, and
I should have been alert,
Keeping watch on the horizon,
There was nothing to report,
I could hear the others mumble
Through the sleepy afternoon,
Then a bell went off, the 'Snifter'
And it galvanized the crew.

The Captain ordered 'Sonar' and
We blasted off a buoy,
Flew on a dozen miles or so
Then dropped another toy,
The 'Jezebel' was chattering
And M.A.D. was cutting in,
Its Anomaly Detection showed
A fish - but made of tin.

I scanned to the horizon but
Saw nothing in my view,
Reported to the Captain, he
Barked orders to the crew,
The Rad-tech on the 'Jezebel'
Yelled, 'Whoopee - listen Bub,
I'm reading off a Russian code,
We've got ourselves a sub! '

I felt the nose begin to dip,
And roll toward the port,
It looked like we were going down
To check the Russian out,
When suddenly a water spout
Appeared from down below,
I yelled up through the intercom:
'Missile - Missile - Go! '

It only seemed a moment that
I braced myself, and then,
The nose-cone shattered, opened up
And left me hanging there,
The wind was like a howling gale
And took my breath away,
I hit the buckles, twisted round
And made for the crawlway.

They pulled me through the tunnel
Bleeding cuts across my face,
'What happened, are we going in? '
No-one was game to say,
The pilot pulled back on the stick
And took her round to port,
'The missile just glanced off us,
Or we wouldn't be here, Sport! '

I heard the Captain rage and swear
Across the intercom,
'That bastards got it coming, he
Won't know where it's coming from! '
We're not supposed to fire on them
The U.N. won't be chuffed,
But after that, I think he knows
That all the bets are off! '

The Neppy brought its nose around
And set off in pursuit,
We dropped two other sonar buoys,
The sub was heading out,
At just above a thousand feet
He said, 'Just let her rip! '
And dropped a dozen depth charges
On that Russian ship.

The water just erupted in
An agony of white,
A swirling burst of bubbles said
Our targeting was right,
And then a long, black shape had leapt
Nose first up from the sea,
We saw it had a broken back,
It sank there, instantly.

We limped our way to Katherine
And landed in the gloom,
A host of men in suits were there,
They shut us in a room,
Then all of us were made to sign
Some forms before we left,
Headed - 'The Official Secrets Act',
They scared us half to death.

I think that I can tell you now,
It's forty years this year,
That in the placid waters of
Gulf Carpentaria,
There lies a sunken, rusted wreck,
A Hammer-Sickle crest,
That took on a single Neptune there,
And well... you know the rest!

27 December 2008