You’ve read about soldiers and sailors,

Of infantry, airmen and tanks.

Of battleships, corvettes and cruisers,

Of Anzacs, them Froggies and Yanks.

There’s also one other to remember,

Who was present at many affray.

He wore neither a medal nor ribbons,

And derides any show of display.

I’m talking of A.B’s and Fireman,

Of Stewards, Greasers and Cooks.

Who manned the great steamers in convoys.

You won’t read about them in books.

No uniforms were they dressed in,

Nor marched with colours unfurled.

They steamed out across wide oceans,

And travelled all over the world.

Their history goes back through the ages,

A record of which to be proud.

And the bones of their fore-fathers moulder,

With nought but the deep for a shroud.

In thousands they sailed from their homeland,

From Liverpool, Hull and the Clyde.

From London, Bristol and Cardiff,

Whose skeletons lie beneath water?

Whose deeds are remembered today?

Their glory will shine undiminished,

Long after their flesh turned to clay.

They battled their way through to Malta,

And rescued the troops from Malay.

They brought all the army’s provisions,

And took all their prisoners away.

And others signed on in the tankers,

And loaded crude oil and octane.

The lifeblood of warships and engines,

Of mechanised transport and plane.

And these were the U-boats chief victims,

What death they were called on to face.

These men were engulfed in infernos,

In ships that were sunk without trace.

But somehow in spite of this drawback,

The steamers still sailed and arrived.

And they fed fifty million odd people,

And right to the end we survived.

When the next generation take over,

This country we now hold in lease.

May they cherish its justice and freedom?

And walk down the pathway of peace.

When the Master of Masters hold judgment,

And the Devils dark angels have flown.

When the clerk of the heavenly council,

Decrees that the names shall be shown.

They will stand out in glittering letters,

Inscribed with the blood they have shed.

Names of ships, and the seamen who manned them,

And the oceans will give up its dead.