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Another Veterans' Day |
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I have seen your laughing faces,
With crinkled,
smiling eyes
Changed by war to somber masks
Where now
only sorrow lies.
What happened to the gung ho kids
Who left home, courage high?
Well, some came back, if
alive,
With eyes that just want to cry.
But, how
is it that you can survive
A war's most vicious wrath,
And, then upon returning home,
Find a serene and peaceful
path
To follow for the rest of your days
While
another comrade-in-arms
Seems to have experienced
Only
deep and incurable harm?
You saw the same
gut-wrenching sights,
Felt the blood ooze, sticky and
warm.
You fought through rice paddies and jungles
And
across sand dunes and farms.
You reacted alike with
visceral anguish
To the searing loss of friends;
You
lived through the same perilous nights
And days that
never seemed to end.
You flew the fast-moving,
vengeful jets and
Chopper medevacs;
You fired off
rockets and dropped Napalm
Or were tireless airborne
FACS.
You manned the door guns and dropped
the
flares that ripped the dark asunder;
You soared above the
smoking earth
as it throbbed to your Rolling Thunder.
You sat huddled in a darkened room,
Glued to your
radar scope,
Knowing that the bright dots you controlled
Were some besieged grunts' final hope.
You patrolled
the base perimeter
Along with your brave canine;
You
drove the trucks and cooked the
meals, and detonated
mines.
You bandaged wounds and operated,
to save
thousands of lives;
You wept for the ones who didn't make
it
And cared for the ones who survived.
You were
numbed by all the endless deaths,
The pain, the
weariness, and terror.
Yet one has somehow found lasting
peace,
While the other leads a life without fervor.
It isn't a matter of simple guts,
For having courage
does not spare
Anyone from the nightmares and flashbacks
That can, unbidden, suddenly flare.
It's something
that resides deep within
The essence of what we are,
That allows one soul to heal itself
While another is too
deeply scarred.
It's something that I contemplate
On the approach of this Veterans' Day;
And I wish for us
all eternal peace
When we come to the end of our ways. |
By Thurman P. Woodfork
Copyright 2003
Listed
April 4, 2011 |
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