The Lisbon Maru
Readers will recall the project by Brian Finch to raise funds for the villagers of Dongji in Eastern China, whose forebears acted so bravely under fire on 2 October 1942 in rescuing hundreds of British and allied prisoners of war when their ship was torpedoed while they were being transported to Japan from Hong Kong. Patrick Hyland saw this poem in a recent issue of his regimental journal, “The Gunner “.
1. There are many tales of heroes
As there are in every war,
Stories of men who turned the tide
And died in battle’s roar.
But it’s easy to die a hero
In a bombshell’s blinding light;
This is a tale of a death that was slow,
In the dark, for a day and a night.
2. It was the morning roll call
On the hellship ‘Lisbon Maru’
On the first day of October
Nineteen hundred and forty-two.
Came a loud explosion
And the old ship lifted and lurched;
A thousand hearts stopped beating
And a thousand voices cursed.
3. The lights grew dim and faded,
As the engines ceased to turn.
A whisper through the crowded hold:
“Torpedoed! Back in the stern!”
The ship was already sinking,
Taking a gradual list
We heard a whining, hissing roar;
A second torpedo had missed.
4. The guns were roaring above us,
Shooting at God knows what.
Rifles were pointing down the hold,
It was getting rather hot.
The warships came alongside
And took the Japs away;
They battened down the hatches-
It seemed we were going to stay.
5. That was attempted murder,
As plain as it could be. There were
Seven ships around the wreck
Shooting at men in the sea.
Japan had blundered once again,
The British were hard to kill.
Many have lived to tell the tale,
And tell the tale we will.
The Editor of “The Gunner” adds:
In the month of remembrance we are indebted to Maj Gen James Templer, whose father was captured at the fall of Hong Kong, for sending us the moving poem The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru, written by Bombardier J W Bowen at Kobe in 1942. The poem, of which this is the start, tells the tale of the sinking of a ship in which prisoners of war were deliberately left locked in the holds to drown and die. Copies of the full poem are available from “The Gunner” on request.