The MOBI’S Prayer

Dear Lord I joined the navy
What did I do it for
My CO and me we disagree
It’s everlasting war
I’ve had to learn to make a bed
To wash and iron my shirt
To clean my boots and mop the floor
It must be free of dirt

I joined the navy with the knowledge
There’d be no getting out
That I would have to toe the line
Their rules I should not flouts
So I paint, I plain, I varnish
I hammer, saw and chisel
Lord I want to be a shipwright
Please help me not to grizzle

When MOBI’s overstay their leave
Before the CO they are lined
For a long and boring lecture
Then to barracks they’re confined
Still a shipwrights what I want to be
So help me to be good
Between the times that I get home
To mother, and her food

I don’t like the Navy’s scrambled eggs
They’re so damned nasty looking
Oh Lord I long to be back home
To some of mother’s cooking
Here the inmates of the salad fight
With the tenants of the mutton
It guarantees that any MOBI
Won’t be a bloody glutton

The other day I blundered
My chastisement wasn’t funny
I had to scrub out every floor
Of every stinking dunny
There was window cleaning to be done
By CO’s special wishes
Then he made me scour the garbage pails
And’ oh God, I fed the fishes

With rifle held aloft I ran
For miles and bleeding miles
While he yelled ‘Keep it up there’
With his lousy sneering smiles
Oh Lord, soften up his heart of iron
Lord, can’t you make him see
That he’s a bigger bloody MOBI
Than I will ever be
                                Amen

by David Collin's Mum, Annie Irene Collins, in the early Sixties