|
Vindiction
By
John Hryn
They Said We Were soft, We Were Aimless
They Said We Were Spoiled Past Reclaim
We Had Lost The American Spirit
And Were Blots On Americans Name.
We Were Useless, Weaklings and Drifters
And, The Last Youth Cencus Reveals,
We Had Lost The Faith Of Our Fathers
Had Sacrificed Muscle For Wheels.
The Old Ones Sighed For Their Country
And Wept For The Days Of Yore,
And Some How We Sort Of Believed Them
But That Was Before The War.
Before We Heard The Bombs Fall
So Ugly, Howling And Shrill
That Ripped Across The Rice Fields
When The Nippy Came For The Kill.
Before We Had Lived On Hunger
On Rumors Nerves And Pain
Before We Had Seen Our Bodies
Dying Among The Cane.
Oh War ! Our Little Rat Trap
The Hopeless Defense of Bataan,
Our Advance Guard Without A Main Body
Yet A Thorn In The Side Of Japan.
So Now We Can Laugh At Our Elders
And Now We Can Give Them The Lie
We Held The Line That Couldn’t Be Held
When They Struck Us At Abucay.
Soft ! Weaklings ! Shameless !
Go Where The Steel Was Sowed,
Ask For The Endless Box Graves
That Dot The Hacjenda Road.
And Ask of the Tangled Thickets
Deadly Green And Hot
And The Bloody Pilar River
And The Forward Slopes Of Siamat.
Ask At Limay And Balanla
Where The Outposts Burrowed Like Moles,
And The Sky Trained Air Corps Soldiers
Dead In Their Infantry Holes.
|
