To the memory of the American crew of a US Flying Fortress (B17) bomber "Sondra Key" that crashed west of Llandrindod Wells, Radnorshire, Wales, on the night of 16 September, 1943, killing all ten men.

"Jesus, that's close!" shouted the pilot as searchlights scoured.
The dreaded flak would soon begin to burst at their altitude
but flight-path timing told only of new targets near
with guide-incendiaries already burning below
beckoning heavy bombs nestling in the bay.
All they knew was that they were far from Wisconsin.

"Jesus, that's close!" yelled the pilot as tracers knifed
bone-white through the threatening cold night air.
Soon they turned to get the hell out of there
the task now done, lightened in load and in spirits
back to their airfield, to newly familiar routine,
crap with other US airmen at an English base.

"Jesus, that was close!" muttered the pilot re-crossing a coast
and Nav-O agreed, plotting their newly diverted course.
Another mission over, they chuckled in sheer relief.
Soon they might glimpse Britain's cliffs etched by phosphorescence.
Now only fuel gauges and that rudder were cockpit concerns
and, of course, a darkened route to an unseen runway.

"Jesus, we're c-l-o-s-e!" screamed the pilot-and they were.
The recently exuberant bomb-aimer had slumped in a heap
Exhausted but dreamless after a night over Bordeaux.
His nerve-torn buddy, still anxious, stayed in the can.
The sweating navigator still held protractors in his grip
Struggling in wayward light to make sense of strange looming shapes.

Twenty miles beyond Shobden Aerodrome now
there are no desperate screams, only silence
and a once uplifting wind stirring the ferns.
At twelve hundred feet they had unwittingly
ploughed a Welsh hillside, scarring green turf
with American steel-their only memorial.