{"id":4618,"date":"2023-11-26T20:26:27","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T20:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=4618"},"modified":"2023-11-28T23:04:46","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T23:04:46","slug":"the-little-ships","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/the-poems\/the-little-ships\/","title":{"rendered":"The little ships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> The little ships<br \/>\nby cricketjeff on June 4, 2010.\u00a0 \u00a9 Jeff Green, All rights reserved<br \/>\nLittle boats all over Britain hurried down to do their bit<br \/>\nPleasure steamers, local ferries and the like<br \/>\nThere were thousands on the beaches and destroyers couldn&#8217;t fit<br \/>\nCouldn&#8217;t save men from the mighty German Reich<br \/>\nThere were Stukas screaming earthward and a deadly rain of shell<br \/>\nAnd a quarter million Britons who had seen the way to Hell<\/p>\n<p>But from all around these islands there were trawlers under way<br \/>\nThere were dinghies. paddle steamers, odds and sods<br \/>\nWhile the rearguard battled panzers and fell back in disarray<br \/>\nBritish sailors risked their lives and begged their gods<br \/>\nStill the French kept up the fighting giving many more the chance<br \/>\nTo return to home and safety, then to fight again for France<\/p>\n<p>There was bravery and bungles, massacres by SS troops<br \/>\nBack in Britain people watched in disbelief<br \/>\nThen the call went out for barges, fishing boats and aged sloops<br \/>\nAs a sleeping nation stirred to stave off grief<br \/>\nIt was only by a whisker that the rout was incomplete<br \/>\nWhen that raggle tag armada snatched some honour from defeat<\/p>\n<p> Author notes<br \/>\nThe 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation has just passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The little ships by cricketjeff on June 4, 2010.\u00a0 \u00a9 Jeff Green, All rights reserved Little boats all over Britain hurried down to do their bit Pleasure steamers, local ferries and the like There were thousands on the beaches and destroyers couldn&#8217;t fit Couldn&#8217;t save men from the mighty German Reich There were Stukas screaming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":9742,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4618","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6890,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4618\/revisions\/6890"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicewaistcoat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}