An aviators’ drinking song from World War I, from James Gilbert’s 1978 anthology Skywriting:

A young aviator lay dying
At the end of a bright summer’s day.
His comrades had gathered around him
To carry his fragments away.

The aeroplane was piled on his wishbone,
His Lewis was wrapped round his head,
He wore a spark plug in each elbow,
‘Twas plain he would shortly be dead.

He spat out a valve and a gasket
As he stirred in the sump where he lay,
And then to his wondering comrades
These brave parting words did he say:

“Take the manifold out of my larynx
And the butterfly valve off my neck.
Remove from my kidneys the camrods;
There’s a lot of good parts in this wreck.

“Take the piston rings out of my stomach,
And the cylinders out of my brain.
Extract from my liver the crankshaft,
And assemble the engine again.

“Pull the longeron out of my backbone,
The turnbuckle out of my ear,
From the small of my back take the rudder —
There’s all of your aeroplane here.”