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THE POET
WARRIOR
Many expressions have depicted the war
There are letters and artwork and books by the score
We have cemetaries [SIC], monuments, plaques on the wall
All this to remember we answered the call
Yet some of us
feel there is more to be said
About our survivors and heroic dead
The unit they served with, the victories they won
The Air Force, the Navy, the guy with the gun
The Airborne
divisions and armoured tank corps
Underwater demolitions, the Marines and their war
Supply and logistics, the planning and dates
All this was assembled to open Hell's Gate
We hardly
remember what started the mess
Bringing thousands of people to a table of Chess
What separated families, and broke up our homes
And left devastation, broken bodies and bones
The victors,
the vanquished have much to be said
Of what profits war, for so many dead
I sometimes
feel anger, outraged and aghast
Of the things I have read and seen in the past
I express them in poem so that I won't forget
My days in this horror when death and I met
You'll find in
this package of poems, I recall
The stories of people who answered the call
Of men and machines whose own intervention
Would pass through the chaos with hardly a mention
Yet because
they were there, mingled in with the crowd
They have all served their country, and made us all proud
To this then I
dedicate all that I know
Of war and of people and places to go
To see small mementoes of so great a time
That has passed on through history as will these few rhymes
Yet, with hope
for the future a new world will bring
Another old poet who will write of new things
Unscathed by the memories of horrors and war
Perhaps, of White Knights, and castles of yore.
William W. Bell
82nd Airborne
508 Parachute Regiment
WWII "42-45" |
