I dropped out of English Literature and never had a liking for poetry, but odd things happen after half a dozen decades and belatedly I have come to the verse of John Pudney. Of course there is an aviation connection, for he was an RAF intelligence officer at St Eval in 1941 when he produced his short book entitled Dispersal Point.
Pudney would certainly have seen many three-man crews leave on ops, and he remembered them in this poem Security which describes the stripping away of all identity before departure. The sting comes in the last line.
Empty your pockets, Tom, Dick and Harry,
Strip your identity, leave it behind.
Lawyer, garage-hand, grocer, don't tarry
With your own country, with your own kind.
Leave all your letters, suburb and township,
Green fen and grocery, slipway and bay,
Hot spring and prairie, smoke-stack and coal-tip,
Leave in our keeping while you are away.
Tom, Dick and Harry, plain names and numbers,
Pilot, Observer and Gunner depart.
Their personal litter only encumbers
Somebody's head; somebody's heart.