Frances Matilda Kramer, center, kept a set of poems from WWII. Courtesy photo
COMMUNITY News:
In recognition of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II this month, Los Alamos resident John Eklund is sharing poems his mother, Frances Matilda Kramer, received during her time as a member of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service in the U.S. Naval Reserve during WWII.
Eklund said his mother, a native of Los Angeles, achieved the rank of 2nd Lieutenant J.G. and was stationed at the Pacific Fleet administrative office in San Francisco. The poems, he said, were found after her death. It isn’t known who sent them.
“They were written in pencil on the ‘Remarks’ side of sheets torn out of an Army Air Corps logbook,” Eklund said. “The data sides of the sheets contained log entries, calculations, and navigation notes on individual flights … The first page was dated Nov. 18, 1944. At the bottom of the first page, somebody other than the author wrote ‘Crosby wrote this on a hop.’ The back of the last page of the manuscript contained weather broadcast weather frequencies and the time tick schedule for stations broadcasting from Honolulu, San Francisco, Washington, and Washington D.C. … Were the poems written during a long, droning leg of a night flight over the featureless Pacific. Or written on a layover while lying on an Army Air Corps cot in a tent on some tropical island? Were the author’s hands numb with cold while he mused during a layover in the Aleutians? Perhaps we’ll find a link to Crosby.”
The poems:
Saga of Crew 4 and the Bucket of Bolts
Oh Richards took the hop one day
It was the dawn patrol
And with all his grit and might and mind
The plane he did control
Now Red was in the Second seat
As happy as a lark
And Jake was sitting at the key,
Just listening to the spark
Schwen was writin’ numbers down
While in the tower he sat
And Spud was cleaning up my gun;
A flashy looking gat.
And standing guard was Nimty, our boy
A gazing out to sea . . .
His eyes were closed, but what the hell,
What was there to see?
Now Bing was at the table
A workin’ like a horse —
He flipped a coin and looked at it
And then laid out the course
You will agree with me I know –
A motley crew was this
But in the veins of each of them
Flowed (crossed out) and fight and grit
Our job it was to scout around,
Isle X and island Y
And report we would the ships we found
Just when, and where, and why.
And if, by Chance, we found a boat,
A small and helpless one
We’d bomb and straff him all to hell
And give ourselves “Well Done”
Barker now we miss the most
When we at home arrive
He loudly shouts when he climbs out
“Thank God, we’re still alive!”
TARAWA
A tiny atoll on the sea
A tinier island still
What possible part in history
Could this small islet fill?
“What possible part?” did I hear you say,
“This insignificant isle?”
The Gods alone may judge its worth,
And their scale is not the mile.
For this is the fort the foe said “Hold”
“It’s the gate of our inner wall”
And this is the place our men said “Take”
“Take this, and the rest will fall”
So the cream of their men the foe put here,
Imperial Marines — their best.
And the cream of our men the general sent,
American Marines — no less.
November the twentieth was the date
And forty-three the year.
That was the day our boys came in
To lay down their lives so dear
And lay down their lives they did, but wait,
They went in a glorious way
For before each life had spent itself
The Japs with four did pay
And from blood-red dawn ‘till blood-red dawn
The fight relentlessly went.
And the beaches were drenched with American blood
But blood that was dearly spent.
For as the days went by we gained
A rod, or two, or three,
Until at last on the twenty-third
This isle, of Japs, was free
A heavy price for this isle to pay,
A thousand lives or more,
But a glorious name for the second Marines
The banner that these men bore.
The gate to the inner wall was breached,
This island was the key.
The men who planned the task were right,
The inner wall fell free.
And so you see its role was great,
This speck upon the sea . . .
For freedom’s price was paid out here,
Freedom for you and me
ALEUTIAN PILOT
What does a pilot think about
When he’s fighting the “Weather War,”
When he’s out in the snow and fog and ice
And a thousand miles from shore?
Does he think about the foe that lurks,
Or the ice that’s on his wings,
Or if, and how, he’ll find his base,
Or a hundred similar things?
Why yes, I s’pose he gives a thought
To subjects such as these,
But other things will crowd his mind
Thoughts strayed overseas
He’ll think of the past, both far and near
Of the things he’s done and seen,
Of the friends he’s left behind him,
And the things that might have been
He’ll think of home in warmer climes,
And flowers that skirt the lawn,
And the smell of earth and graceful trees,
And winging birds at dawn.
Loved ones too, will fill his mind
As through the fog he’ll fly
He’ll see his girl, or wife and child
As they tearfully waved goodbye
And then to the future his vision turns,
To the things he’ll say and do,
To the task he’ll take, and the home he’ll build
When skies again are blue.
And for dreams like these he’ll gladly fly
Through hail and sleet and rain
‘Till the ugly dream of war has passed,
And there is peace again