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Contributor: C. Douglas Caffey || Poem Categories

Looking Back... Again country as flag
Standing on the edge
of tomorrow
looking back
at war's human sorrow...
The ranks are thinner
than when we started
for young friends
from us were parted.

Some left on a cold
December morn
and since that day
have never been warm...
Some lie in the ghost
of great naval ships
sunk at Pearl
by Zeros from the Risin' Sun.
Day of Infamy we'll never
forget...
looking back
we see them yet!

Some gave their all
at a place called Midway
answering the call
in painting the white sands
blazing red...
where they bled
never looking back
from their dying bed...

War's curtain
closed the scene...
of those flying high
in a Hell Cat
Flying machine...
Down, down with high
pitched sound
round and round
they turn in flames
to burn... and then to drown!

From Carriers, the planes...
like so many bees
gave birth to guns and bombs
then fell headlong into the seas...
Thinning the ranks of
young aviators
with young men's dreams
never to be...
Looking back with me
upon a blood-red sea...
the price paid in blood
for sweet liberty...

From the Solomon Islands
to Australia's Barrier Reef,
came young Americans
with ships and planes...
fightin' mad... who lost their ships
to under water blips
and sank beneath the waves...
to deep Pacific graves
never looking back!

On to the Marshals...
a place called Kwajalein (kwag-ah-lean)
four thousand of the foe
to die...
beneath a red-blood sky...
pay back time...
boom! boom! Yackety-yack
and we never looked back...

With B-29's by the score...
from Tinian and Saipan
flying fifteen hundred miles
or more...
leveled the cities of Japan
the place of the Rising Sun...
scorched the earth
leaving no place to run...

The Enola Gay on 8/6/45
hit Hiroshima, left few alive
and now the world
looks back... at ranks so thin!
By C. Douglas Caffey
Copyright 2004
Listed March 16, 2009

Author's Bio:
C. Douglas Caffey is a disabled veteran of WWII. He served (1944-1946) in the 509th Composite Bomb Group, 58th Wing, Air Photo Unit, 20th Air Force, United States Army Air Force. It was the 509th who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan and did the atom bomb tests at Bikini in the Pacific. A chronic sufferer of PTSD since WWII, Doug is a former college dean. He started writing poetry several years ago and though he doesn't claim to be a poet, he does claim to write from the heart.
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