The Death of the Ball Turret
Gunner is a five-line poem by Randall Jarrell published in 1945. It is about
the death of a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II American bomber
aircraft.
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 its 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.
Jarrell, published the poem
in 1945. It drew directly from his own involvement with military aircraft and
airmen during WW2. he provided the following explanatory note: A ball
turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of
a B-17 or B-24, 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 with the turret; hunched
upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The
fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The
hose was a steam hose. The theme of Randall Jarrell's "The Death of
the Ball Turret Gunner" is that institutionalized violence, or war,
creates moral paradox, a condition in which acts repugnant to human nature
become appropriate. Most commentators agree, calling the poem a
condemnation of the dehumanizing powers of "the State", which are most
graphically exhibited by the violence of war. This poem made me feel like I was
there. What I mean by that is, by reading this and from a personal family
experience, I understand it all now. My Great Uncle was a ball turret gunner
during WWII in the European theater. He had many demons over the years from
that experience. He didn't want to talk about it, he drank to numb the pain and
it sadly took a good man down. Also, when
I read the poem it made me very sad, especially when he said "When I died
they washed me out of the turret with a hose".
The Death of the Ball Turret
Gunner is a five-line poem by Randall Jarrell published in 1945. It is about
the death of a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II American bomber
aircraft.
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its 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.
Jarrell, published the poem
in 1945. It drew directly from his own involvement with military aircraft and
airmen during WW2. he provided the following explanatory note: A ball
turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of
a B-17 or B-24, 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 with the turret; hunched
upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The
fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The
hose was a steam hose. The theme of Randall Jarrell's "The Death of
the Ball Turret Gunner" is that institutionalized violence, or war,
creates moral paradox, a condition in which acts repugnant to human nature
become appropriate. Most commentators agree, calling the poem a
condemnation of the dehumanizing powers of "the State", which are most
graphically exhibited by the violence of war. This poem made me feel like I was
there. What I mean by that is, by reading this and from a personal family
experience, I understand it all now. My Great Uncle was a ball turret gunner
during WWII in the European theater. He had many demons over the years from
that experience. He didn't want to talk about it, he drank to numb the pain and
it sadly took a good man down. Also, when
I read the poem it made me very sad, especially when he said "When I died
they washed me out of the turret with a hose".
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-death-of-the-ball-turret-gunner-2
