B-17 Flying Fortress

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The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

"When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

"A ball turret was a plexiglass sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24 bomber and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short, small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine-guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with canon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." (Jarrell's notes)

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"Bad Poets"
by Randall Jarrell

...thin pamphlets, imported paper, hard lives, hopeless ambitions;
ripped-out arms and legs...