Giants in the Dark

The story

On January 19, 1915, German airships raided England for the first time, bombing towns on the Norfolk coast. On May 31, 1915, Zeppelin LZ 38 bombed London under a full moon; the first bombs fell on Stoke Newington. For the first time, a great city learned to live with danger from the sky. Blackouts and dimmed street lights became part of daily life, and the raids reached the Midlands and many other parts of the country.

At first the defenders had little answer. The airships flew high, the early fighters struggled to climb to them in time, and ordinary bullets passed through the gas cells without setting the hydrogen on fire.

By 1916 that had changed. On the night of September 2–3, 1916, Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson attacked the airship SL 11 over Hertfordshire in a B.E.2c, firing incendiary ammunition. SL 11 was a Schütte-Lanz, built with a wooden frame, although the press at the time called it a Zeppelin. It caught fire and fell at Cuffley, in a blaze seen across north London, and crowds cheered in the streets. None of the crew survived. Robinson received the Victoria Cross.

The song is a parlour ballad in a minor key. It does not stop at the cheering: "a cross for the pilot, a grave for the crew, two kinds of courage in the same dark blue".

Lyrics

Verse 1A city by the river, asleep in the night,
Had never known war from the sky's cold height.
May, nineteen fifteen, under a full moon,
A shape in the air, and then the first bomb.
Stoke Newington woke to a fire and a roar,
And the city was never the same as before.

Pre-ChorusCurtains pulled tight, the street lamps low,
Nowhere to run and nowhere to go.

ChorusPut out the lights, put out the lights,
The giants are floating across the night.
Giants in the dark, high above the town,
Hold your breath and don't make a sound.

Verse 2They rode too high for the guns below,
And no early fighter could reach them, no.
Month after month the raids came on,
Over the Midlands, from dusk until dawn.
And the people learned to read the sky,
And to count the minutes as the night went by.

Pre-ChorusCurtains pulled tight, the street lamps low,
Nowhere to run and nowhere to go.

ChorusPut out the lights, put out the lights,
The giants are floating across the night.
Giants in the dark, high above the town,
Hold your breath and don't make a sound.

Verse 3September, sixteen, a young pilot flew
With a new kind of bullet, and fire in the blue.
The giant burned like a second sun,
And the city saw it, every one.
They cheered in the streets, they cheered at the sight,
But fifteen men fell through the fire that night.

BridgeA cross for the pilot, a grave for the crew,
Two kinds of courage in the same dark blue.
The sky doesn't ask on which side you fell,
It keeps every story it has to tell.

Final ChorusPut out the lights, put out the lights,
The giants are fading out of the night.
Giants in the dark, fading from the town,
But the sky now knows what it can bring down.

OutroPut out the lights...