Dawn Patrol - David Knopfler

Goggles down, pull prop and pray

Thumbs up, chaps, and chocks away

In the castor fumes in the cockpit cold

In the puke and fear of dawn patrol

Sailing out into the gold

Sailing out to dawn patrol

Black Wing heads out to the storm

To the hunting grounds across the Somme

To test his hawk in the blitz and blood

And a pox upon all oath’s he’d sworn

Sailing out into the gold

Condemned to fly the dawn patrol

Reapers high in the combat zone

Cloud-dodging over no man’s land

Tests his guns and nothing’s wrong

Now this crate is his and to command

Then dropping like a killing stone

He comes spinning from the sun

Sailing out into the gold

It’s the darkest knight of dawn patrol

It’s man to man, eye to eye

Dog fights in a framed sky

Saluting those about to die

His ammo’s spent His guns are lammed

He gives a nod He waves goodbye

In the ack-ack and the rat-tat-tat

With a silver hip flask to his lips

The tattooed balsa spits and splits

Where the odds are long and the balance shifts

It’s a Maltese cross or a fleur-de-lis

Or a bullseye on the mess hall door

Chalk one down to the Ace of Wreathes

In a danse-macabre with the Prince of Thieves

Black Wing in a dream of dreams

Gives his comrades one last roll

The canvas shreds, the fuel is gone

He’s no chance now to hedge-hop home

We’ll chalk one down to the gods of wrath

Heading west in a dance of death

Spinning west in a blaze of gold

Condemned to die on dawn patrol

A bugler sounds one final horn

No psalm, no prayer.

no requiem

Stark and numb is the last post’s call

For the pilot lost on foreign soil

Black Wing heads out to the cold

Marking well the bell’s bleak toll

Black Wing sails out to the gold

He’s sailing out to dawn patrol