The Last day of HMS Hermes

It was a rainy Thursday morning

when granddad's ship went down

The Hermes aircraft carrier

went boom outside the town

At the time they were patrolling

the South Atlantic sea

no sailor on the Hermes

had thought they would flee

The men were doing duties

aboard the Hermes deck

in only an hours time

The ship would be a wreck

The Hermes had no air support

the Fairy Swordfish gone

they had gone to guard the people

who were endangered at Ceylon

The kamikaze bomber planes

were sent there from abroad

they sank the Hermes down in one

and killed the men onboard

It took precisely just one hour

for the Navy's ship to sink

The Hermes is the toughest boat

or that's what people think

The Hermes was the second boat

to be sunk that day

the Australian destroyer

was sunk not far away

The crew were stranded for five hours

out there in the blue sea

four hundred men already dead

no sign of Trincomalee

Then the Vita cam to sight

and with it brought the glee

the sailors would soon be onboard

and out the freezing sea

It took a while to reach Ceylon

In fact it took eight days

the Vita did not travel fast

at last they reached the bays

The many men were gathered there

waiting for the crew

to see who had been lost at sea

and that was quite a few

The sailors from the Hermes ship

were taken to recover

at the local Naval barracks

where they did help each other

with support and understanding

the sailors told their tale

of fighter planes and Japanese

and how they did not fail

The people were intrigued as how

the planes had found the ships

for they had sailed far away

to avoid the coming blitz

After all had been discussed

the men were left to rest

although some of the sailors died

the crew had done their best

Four weeks later the men received

gold medals from the Queen

for bravery out in the sea

that many men had seen

My granddad was a lucky chap

he lived to tell the tale

of how Hermes had been sank

it made me rather pale

by Michelle Dart