Veterans Day / Memorial Day Poem #242
Otis Willie PIO The American War Library
Untitled
The shrapnel hums a deadly song that sounds like a crazy boomerang that won t
return home. I try to make my body small my hands clasped over my head to
protect my ears and neck. Hot waves of concussion blow overhead you keep your
mouth open so it won t explode your head. You want to scream or shout but the
fear and dust won t let the words come out. Each explosion pushes you ever
closer to the bone deep terror that comes back in your dreams long after the war
is over. Each man in his own private hell. After each salvo you dare to look
around the ravaged ground to see which friends went down. You look at the ones
going out in body bags with names you don t want to remember and at the ones
that are screaming as the medics attend them. Then the shells start to fall
again, sending you back in your hole curled into a little ball holding on to
your soul and fighting the fear with all your might. The fear never ends you can
see it naked and haunting in the eyes of your friends. They have that 1000 yard
stare as if everything inside has got up and went leaving a empty husk of a
person with one desire, for the shells to stop or maybe live for a few more
hours. We lay here and endure this hell for a piece of muddy ground just so we
can give it back when we think we are finished. Men are screaming that haven t
been hit pushed over the edge into the pits, where insanity sits. Some never to
come back while others are ravaged for life in one way or other. I consider all
of them my brothers.
Written from the heart by Harvie Lance
Purple Heart Marine S-2 Scout 1/9 68-69
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-- Otis Willie (Ret.)
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