Bombers Moon

from Bombers' Moon by Mike Harding

/

about

Dedicated to the memory of my father, Flight Sergeant Louis Arthur ‘Curly’ Harding, a navigator in Lancaster Bombers, who died with his crew when his plane was shot down returning from a raid over Germany. Its also dedicated to the memory my good friend Jurgen Boch of Cologne, who was a small child in a bomb shelter in Germany on the night my father died, and to my mother who was a bride, a widow and a mother within the space of a year.

lyrics

’44 in Bomber County
young men waiting for the night
In the hedgerows birds are singing
Calling in the falling light.
And the captain says
‘Tonight there’ll be a bomber’s moon
We’ll be there and back underneath a bombers’ moon
A thousand bombers over the northern sea
Heading out, out for Germany.’
Chalkey White stands at the dartboard
Curly Thompson writes to his wife
Nobby Clarke and Jumbo Johnson
Are playing cards and smoking pipes
And over the hangars rises a bombers’ moon
Full and clear rising, as the engines croon
And the planes they taxi out on to runway five
And sail off out into the silvery night.
Sandy Campbell checks his oil gauge
The Belgian coast is coming soon
Curly Thompson lifts his sextant
Lines up on a bombers’ moon
And waves are shining there below the bombers’ moon
The Lancasters flying high below the bombers’ moon
Coming in along the Belgian coast
A thousand silver-shrouded ghosts.
Flak flies up around the city
Jumbo Johnson banks his plane
Goes in low and drops his payload
Turns to join the pack again.
And people are dying there below the bomber’s moon
The city’s a raging hell below the bomber’s moon
And the planes head out towards the northern sea
Young men coming home from victory.
Over Belgium came the fighters
Flying high against the night
Curly Thompson saw them coming
Closing in before he died.
And the young men shot them down below the bomber’s moon
Shot them down in flames below the bomber’s moon
Young men sending young men to their graves
Saw them down into the North Sea waves.
’83 in Bomber County
Mrs White dusts the picture and she cries
Chalkey White in uniform
Looking as he did the day he died.
And for God’s sake no more bombers’ moons
No more young men going out to die too soon
Old men sending young men out to die
Young men dying for a politician’s lies.
For God’s sake no more bombers’ moons
No more young men going out to die too soon
Old men sending young men out to kill.
If we don’t stop them then they never will.
No more no more bombers’ moons.
No more no more bombers’ moons.
No more no more bombers’ moons.
No more no more bombers’ moons.

credits

from Bombers' Moon, released April 4, 1984
Mike Harding: Vocals – Mark Vibrans: Piano – Sue Getty: Cor Anglais – The Barker String Quartet

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Mike Harding Settle, UK

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