Empty your pockets

MPotterPL1878961-150914-30.jpg

Title

Empty your pockets

Description

From Dispersal Point. Men leave behind their identities to become aircrew. Submitted with caption; 'RAF Poem'.

Creator

Date

1942

Language

Format

One page printed document

Rights

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

Contributor

Identifier

MPotterPL1878961-150914-30

Transcription

Empty your pockets, Tom, Dick and Harry. Strip your
identity, leave it behind.
Lawyer, Farmhand, Mechanic, don’t tarry with your
own country with your own kind.
Leave all your letters, suburb and township.
Green Fen and grocery, slip-way and bay.
Hot spring and prairie, smoke stack and coal tip.
Leave in our keeping while you’re away.
Tom, Dick and Harry, plain names and numbers,
Pilot, Observer and Gunner depart
Their personal litter only encumbers
Somebody’s head, somebody’s heart.

Collection

Citation

John Pudney, “Empty your pockets,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 17, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/30905.

Item Relations

This item has no relations.