"What did you do in the war? Daddy,

How did you help us win?"

"Circuits and bumps and turns' laddy,

And how to get out of a spin?"

Woe and alack and misery me! I trundle around in the sky,

And instead of machine-gunning Nazis I'm teaching young hopefuls to fly;

Thus is my service rewarded, my years of experience paid,

Never a Hun have I followed right down nor ever gone out on a raid.

They don't even let us go crazy, we have to be safe and sedate,

So it's nix on inverted approaches, they stir up the C.F.I.'s hate.

For it's oh such a naughty example, and what will the A.O.C. think!

But we never get posted to fighters - we just get a spell on the link.

So it's circuits and bumps from morning till noon, and instruments - flying till tea.

Hold her off, give her bank, put your undercart down,

you're skidding, you're skipping" that's me.

And as soon as you've finished with one course, like a flash up another bobs,

And there's four more to show round the cockpit and four more to try out the knobs.

But sometimes we read in the papers of the deeds that old pupils have done,

And we're proud to have seen their beginnings and shown them the way to the sun:

So if you find the money and turn out the planes we'll give all we know to the men

Till they cluster the sky with their triumphs and burn out the Beast from his den.

For further information on the loss of Flt Lt. Owen Chave

see page of remembrance

(First published in "Punch" magazine September 18th 1940)