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[core () bokeoa com (Charles Stevenson)]

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I just thought I'd share a poem with you all. Author is unknown to my
knowledge. I found it on the Special Forces team house site a couple
years back but I forgot the URL. This one's for my gramps and
dad.. and all people who have died for what they believed in, and
especially to all those who have died because they got caught in the
preverbial crossfire. I hope some day man will realise that killing
off everyone who disagrees with you is futile. And shouts to COL
Hitchcock my old professor and mentor who originally wrote the phrase
"freedom isn't free" for some form or other of the services memorial
or something I forget. But that leads me to tangent thoughts about how
no one really is the first to coin a phrase or term or idea... but
that's a rant for another day. PEACE! =3D)

--oO  Freedom Isn't Free  Oo--

I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze
A young soldier saluted it, and then
He stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers' tears?
How many Pilots' planes shot down?
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No Freedom isn't free

I heard the sound of taps one night,
When everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That taps had meant "Amen"
When a flag had draped a coffin
of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard at the
bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.....
No --  Freedom isn't free!!

peace,
core

--=20
  Charles Stevenson (core) <core () bokeoa com>
  Lab Assistant, College of Eastern Utah San Juan Campus=20
  http://www.bokeoa.com/~core/core.asc


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