For whom lie dead in Kristiansand

And buried by a foreign hand

Can be no scent of Scottish Seas,

Nor tang of fir upon the breeze,

No sight of Dundee's chimney stacks,

Indeed, their earth-dimmed hearing lacks

Sound of the pipes upon the hills,

Sound of the river and the rills,

Nor all the whisperings of the Usk

Sounds of the rivers and the rills,

Nor all the whisperings of the Usk

Can follow them into the dusk;

And their cold fingers cannot touch

The Fifeshire girls they loved as much

As any friend, who made his way

Across the sky that fatal day.

And yet there only lies between

Their hearts and mine the grey and green

Dark Northern sea. How should we fail

To clasp our hands across a veil

That scarce divides their lives and mine,

And is so slight and frail and fine

That still I hear them call to me

Across two hundred miles of sea?

Poem dedicated to P/O. Charles MacLaren and his crew.

107 Squadron Blenheim IV Z5795