When you go home, tell them of us and say
For your tomorrow... We gave our today...

Eighty years ago, on August 18th 1940, the hardest day,
A  twenty year old, pilot set out upon a mission, from which he never returned                                              (His remains were recovered, which was not always the case, fire saw to that.)
Born eleven years before his sister, he'd had a sort of fun battling Jerry in the sky
Though he knew it was likely he'd soon die, statistics and his eyes didn't lie.
His favouirite poem was Yeats' 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death':
"A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;"
Now, in 2020, I imagine him spiralling towards the ground
Above the south downs with a grin upon his tear-stained face.
Thank God he wasn't on fire, as so many aircrew were. 
He and his girl, they'd decided not to wed, until he had a future
And now he'd be dead. And all for this place he'd called Blighty.
Though really he was just a south Bucks boy
Who had, as in Thomas Grey's 'Elegy', written in fair Stoke Poges:
"The little tyrant of his fields withstood."
And I am proud, and proud beyond measure, that he was of my blood.