Dits & Bits

Poems From George Fleming:

No1 is ' James 'Mick' Magennis VC' by poet Tom Paulin published in 2000
after reading my biography on Mick Magennis. David Hammond (Documentary
film maker) sent him a copy of 'Magennis VC' after my book launches in the Submarine Museum, Eden Camp Yorkshire and the Linen Hall library in 1998.
Tom Paulin sent me a postcard asking questions about the small techinal details of the attack as he found it hard to understand how the limpet mine carrier became stuck and was then released by Magennis having to swim out of the submarine XE3 for a second time. I explained all the details over the telephone and I notice he has included the info in his poem.

Tom Paulin, well known for his radicalism, is the resident poet at Oxford University. He is also well known as an art & literature critique on BBC 2 .

Published in LONDON REVIEW of books.
Volume 22 Number 1 6 January 2000

James 'Mick' Magennis VC
By Tom Paulin 2000

You get of the boat and they call you Paddy
- Paddy or Mick
of course its the same thing
and sometimes that nick name'll stick as it stuck to me
- clamped - mine waiting for that time we nudged our midget submarine under the Takao's keel
- I tried open the hatch but it hit on the cruiser's bottom
- there was no room to get out so I loosened the catch on my breathing set took a deep charge of oxygen then pushed the set through followed it out and fixed the set back
- talk about setbacks that was like squeezing between two positions but the ship's bottom it was all one dense mass of barnacles weed and razor-sharp shells that tore my hands and my diving suit
- no way could I make the limpet mines stick I went back to the sub and noted the gap was even narrower now
- the tide was dropping
- and I'd be trapped then captured - and worse - by the Japs so I took some rope and lashed the mines to the keel then back to the sub and squeezed my torn rubber suit and me in to the wet and dry compartment
- I closed the hatch and started to drain down but to free the sub from under the cruiser's keel was almost impossible now so Lt Fraser - Titch -
he blew out the ballast tanks and we bobbed to the surface just for a moment
- no searchlight nothing we dropped back onto the ocean floor just a few yards from the Takao then he pulled a lever
- both side carriers two tons of Amatol explosive they fell away but the limpet mine carrier it wedged us hard in and wouldn't drop clear Titch said he's go out
-I was bate sweating dogtired but no this was my job of work so taking a big spanner I made a third visit outa that jammed hatch and turned off the crate then got the fuck out not a moment too late. I tell it now for all that it was
- an exact adventure except that hatch and the ways I squeezed through come back like a catch in my lungbursting tale
- Sir Crawford McCullough a hardbollock Unionist Lord mayor he wouldn't make me a freeman of the City of Belfast while down at St Finians my old school on the Falls no one stood in the classroom
- not a single Nationalist I'd betrayed the cause that'st they said I left the navy and when times got hard sold my VC
- but I- BUY-ANYTHING- Kavanagh he gave me it back
- my photie in the Tele! I was shamed to the world so I left belfast for good
- I blew up that ship but the cith it blew itself up again and again and again this is no green rub no hard luck story for when I took that deep breath to push out of the sub I was inside history and away far out of it
- I'd squeezed through the gap and swum free a silent bubblebrushed diver who moment by moment knew exactly what it was to dive like a gannet into the deep deep ocean then rise out of it again free and complete yes a one off a genius.

No2 Unlike Paulin, another well known Ulster poet and former President of the NI Arts Council Michael Longley also wrote a poem titled: 'Homage to James 'Mick' Magennis VC'

'Homage to James 'Mick' Magennis VC'
by Michael Longley 2000

At the preformance of Merce Cunningham's Ocean In the Waterfront Hall the coral-coloured dancers Drenched my head with silence and whale messages And made me feel like a frogman on dry land.

There was room for only one midget submarine In the roof space where my mind had floated, and where Swimming from the Falls Road Baths to Singapore Mick Magennis emerged in his frogman's suit.

Oxygen leaking in tell bubbles up to heaven His expression unfathomable behind the visor But his modest thumbs-up confirming that, yes He had struck limpet mines on the cruiser Takao

Alongside dog-paddling, ballet dancing polar bears, Penguins like torpedoes, dolphins in twos and threes Sea otters, seals, Mick was formation- swimming and At home in the ocean's cupola above my head.

No3) Interesting Michael Longley also wrote another poem titled "THE SEWING
MACHINE" about another type of artwork I experimented with at art college
during my Post Grad year. (Quiltmaking). Both poems were included in his book of poems titled 'The Weather in Japan" which won him the 'Hawthornden'
Britains longest established literary prize and a cheque for £10,000 in July 2000

THE SEWING MACHINE.
by Michael Longley 2000

George Fleming is making out of sailors' collars A quilt that will cover the sea bed and the graves Of Submariners in their submarines. Listen As his sewing machine of waterlogged cap tallies:
Stonehenge sunk off the Nicobar Islands, Spearfish And Salmon off Norway, Unbeaten and Snapper In the Bay of Biscay, in the Gulf of Tarano Tempest and Odin - torpedoes, depth charges, Mines - Pandora, Thunderbolt, Narwhal, Urge And Porpoise, the Last submarine sunk in the war.

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The reason i got the job of Honorary Secretary is because....

I'm too old to get a paper round.

I'm too young to get a pension...

I'm too tired to have an affair !!

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WANTED !!!

A good woman who can sew, cook, clean and gut fish and has a boat with a motor, please send photo of boat and motor.

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Outside stoker to O.O.W.

Permission to blow slup drain tank Sir.

O.O.W. to Stoker.

How much is in it ?

Stoker to O.O.W.

Its too turds full Sir.

On hearing this the cockswain fell off the after planes with laughter, he could not catch the bubble as the boat lept around like a porpoise.

And friends this story is true as i was the stocker !

M(e1) Norman Leslie (Paddy)

Osiris, Odin

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