May I apologise to E R Wadge of Torpoint (Cornish Times Letters, November 12) for I did not compose the Heroes poem, it was sent to me and I just thought it needed a larger audience. To balance the score would you please print the following poem, again anonymous, but like himself being ex-Royal Navy it brought back some memories which is what the poem is called. I once looked out from the Tamar Bridge at the warships down below, Ships of the Royal Navy, with names I do not know. As I stood and gazed at them on the water down below, I saw a fleet of phantom ships and men of long ago. The Rodney and The Nelson, The Valiant, Ramillies, Repulse, Renown and Malaya, coming home from foreign seas. I saw Revenge and Warspite, ill-fated Royal Oak, so many ships, their names made faint by shell and fire and smoke. And some I see to harbour come, as though through glasses dark, The Barham and The Glorious, Eagle and The Ark, And then there comes the greatest, the mighty Warship Hood, dark and grey and wraithlike, from the spot on which I stood. From the cruel North Atlantic, from the Med and Java Sea, the big ships and the little ships returned for me to see. There's the Gloworm and The Harding, The Devonshire and Kent,The Cossack, and Courageous, The Suffolk and Ardent. But mercifully hidden are the men and stilled their cries, now I can't see very clearly, must be the smoke that's in my eyes, You won't know Shorty Hasset, he won the D.S.M. He still fought on when Exeter was burning stern to stem. Where now Dodger Long and Lofty, where now the boys and men? They are lost forever, will we see their like again? I thought I saw them mustering on deck for daily prayer and heard "For Those In Peril" rise on the evening air. Then darker grew the picture as the lowering night came on. I looked down from the lofty bridge but all those ships had gone. Those mighty ships had vanished, gone those simple men, we'll surely never ever see, the like of them again.
P FENNEY Saltash