A reprise of a memoir memory for today’s remembrances.

During WWII, my dad was a radio operator on a Merchant Marine Tanker supplying the US Navy’s War Machine in the south Pacific. During wartime, the Merchant Marine becomes an Auxilary of the Navy. Dad received his training to become a radio operator at Great Lake Academy. He was an officer, a lieutenant, I think, though he never said, but there are family pictures of him from that time in his uniform that certainly looks like a Naval officer’s. One of the requirements for a radio operator was proficiency in receiving and sending Morse Code. The following poem is based on one of my dad’s stories.

S.O.S.

tapping Morse code key
in a round continually
dit, dit, dit, (S) …
dah, dah, dah, (O) – – –
dit, dit, dit,  (S) …

while Kamikazes
strafe the decks
guiding their planes
on a one-way
radio shack tour

watching as it zeros in
hit the door running
over the rail with ocean
60 feet below – explosion
debris in hot pursuit

rata tat tat, ratatattat of
deck guns vomiting fire
and lead preempt some
suicides as smoking areo-
carcasses hit turbulent seas

–LE

SOS literally means Save Our Ship. The radio shack was one of the first targets for Japanese Kamikazes when they came across alied tankers.