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Sam took a round one night,
It caught him in the throat.
He died while we fought to save him.
The Captain and I wrote
And told his momma that he died quickly
Instead of drowning in his blood.
Slowly strangling, sobbing, gasping,
Dying hard in highland mud.
Larry triggered off a mine,
It ripped his legs off all the way.
Blew a hole-you could see clean through him;
The mud he died in was cold and gray.
They sent him home in a sealed coffin,
And told his mom it was best kept closed.
She burns a candle by his picture,
Her grief's still raw and exposed.
She can't be sure he's really gone,
It could be some other boy instead.
She never saw him lying dying,
She never saw him lying dead.
So she prays that he's just missing.
She keeps his room clean and makes his bed.
Miguel and Davis caught a rocket.
We never even found their tags.
We gathered up the bits of bodies
And shoved them in two body bags.
Two more closed boxes got shipped homeward,
Two more families destroyed by "fate".
Davis had a wife and baby,
Miguel's allotment supported eight.
Those are names I remember,
Other names I've forgotten since.
But in my mind I see the markers standing
Like some long white picket fence.
I see their faces and remember
How they lived and fought and died.
I can hear their talking, cries and laughter.
And watch them strut in boyish pride.
I quit being friendly to the cherries,
It got so I hated to see them come,
Because the chances were we'd have to bag them.
War ain't forgiving to the young and dumb.
Some of these boys hadn't started shaving.
New changed voices, buzzed cut hair-
They didn't expect the shit they fell in,
War catches everybody unaware.
The dead in Nam weren't all American boys
Our country wages war quite well.
The countryside changes after we pass through it
And becomes a extensive plot of hell.
So as we bow our heads and mourn our dead,
Our mourning hasn't yet begun.
For our heart must contain all the slain
And include those we put to the gun.
Ho sadly left his wife and child.
He left his school and the lives he taught.
The imperialist devil was destroying his country,
He felt the war was Just and must be fought.
As he stood and smelled a flower,
His rifle hanging by his side
A bullet ended his wonder forever.
This lover of knowledge, a gentle man, died.
We should come out of war a whole lot wiser
With ability to control our destructive urges.
However, diplomacy by holocaust is a popular solution.
And even revolutionaries clean up with purges.
All wars are filled with such hard deep sorrow
With random losses of innocence, limbs and life.
Wartime deaths are meaningless bodies
Caused by casual brutal butchery, starvation and strife.
Those that die, are gone forever
Short time living, long time gone.
They will exist only in kindred memory
Heroic poetry and patriotic song.
All the things their hands would do
Will be dead, will be gone, will never be.
All the visions born within their hearts
No one else will ever see.
Now that I am so much older
And dreams wake me in the night,
I see their faces-mostly young boys-
Thinking that their side was right.
They're all dead now, but we still remember
And haven't learned too much at all
Our chests still swell and we rattle sabers
When we hear the bugle call
We send the young ones off to battle
With thoughts of heroes, war and fight
Us old ones lie about the glory.
Age has robbed us of our sight.
Now we let cowards lead us,
Marching sadly into hell.
Gutless wonders now proceed us
Like evil goats with a clanging bell.
And like sheep we follow blindly.
-Silver-
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