Pearl Harbor From conversations with a sailor
Poem by: zorba3150
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A pressure shock from the first bomb
blew my white hat off.
I jumped to my feet and took off running.
No direction. No reason. A fighter came
in low and strafed my shipmates.
More bombs punched through the
deck. The screech of bulkheads twisting
apart and men crying out below decks
filled my ears. Young men who'd done
their jobs, and now it was over. Black
smoke poured out of the breaches.
Fuel swept over the deck and my feet
went from under me. I tried getting
up, but I kept going ass over bandboxes
in the same spot. I yelled to God,
"I'll swear off! Let me live!"
He crushed a volcano in his fist and
threw down the slag. A three-hundred
-pound hatch flew into the air. As high as
the ship's bridge, it went. It came down next
to me so hard that my feet went numb. An
anchor chain tore loose and helicoptered
over my head. That's when I fell to my
belly and started crawling for the ship's
rail, crawling blind because of the fuel
in my eyes. Something hot and jagged
slashed my right hand open. I didn't know
what. I couldn't see! I kept reaching out
like dying men sometimes do. I felt the ship's
rail then dropped over the side.
That's how I escaped that tub.
She'd been a proud ship once,
a heavy cruiser with eight-inch guns.
Six months later, I shipped out on a destroyer.
A U-boat sent her to the bottom with a single
torpedo.
Down she went, and back into the water I went.
I felt sure the sharks were gonna rip me up.
Instead, a rescue operation came along….
Submitted: February 26, 2025
© Copyright 2025 zorba3150. All rights reserved.
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