ISSUE: Spring 1944
We are the ones on whom the cranes slipped at the docks,
The ones who missed the gangplank and were ironically drowned,
The ones who were lost in a blinding storm a few feet from the hut,
Who died without any struggle, who perished without sound.
We were the ones whom the fumes got, on whom the beams were dropped,
Who kicked out one night of a minor infection of the heel;
We were there in the path when the vat of acid tipped,
When the defective length of fan-belt broke from the wheel.
We were not in the heat of battle; there will not be any citations or stars;
We did not get far enough to be targets for spent shell;
We were just quietly working or doing what we were always doing
At the moment when we were quietly knocked to hell.
Remember us briefly, then, when the bugles sing the heroic dead,
When the orations and music and bronze memorial plaques atone:
For it is not that we have died in war, but died ingloriously,
Not that we have gone into the dark, but gone alone.
