''A Soldier Died Today.''

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

For my 1000th post I decided to type / post something meaningful paying homage to all those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom that we enjoy today .
So as a Memorial day tribute here's a poem I found while cleaning out my Humvee last week . I also foud a copy of it on the internet . It's about a soldier and his passing ....a real tear jerking poem .

A SOLDIER DIED TODAY

Originally Titled, "JUST A COMMON SOLDIER"
_
by A. Lawrence Vaincourt ©1985
Reprinted By Permission



_
He was getting_ old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past
Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.


And tho' sometimes, to his neighbors, his tales became a joke,
All his Legion buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.
But we'll hear his tales no longer for old Bill has passed away,
And the world's a little poorer, for a soldier died today.


He will not be mourned by many, just his children and his wife,
For he lived an ordinary and quite uneventful life.
Held a job and raised a family, quietly going his own way,
And the world won't note his passing, though a soldier died today.


When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing and proclaim that they were great.
Papers tell their whole life stories, from the time that they were young,
But the passing of a soldier goes unnoticed and unsung.


Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land
A guy who breaks his promises and cons his fellow man?
Or the ordinary fellow who, in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life?


A politician's stipend and the style in which he lives
____________ Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.
While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,
_ Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.


It's so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,
That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know
It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.


Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,
Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?
Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend
His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?


He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier's part
Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.


If we cannot do him honor while he's here to hear the praise,
Then at least let's give him homage at the ending of his days.
Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,
Our Country is in mourning, for a soldier died today.

Happy Memorial Day

[daedalus]

Wonderful poem. And a heck of a 1000th post.

[Schmidty]

I wish I weren't so cynical.

[Neuqua]

That was great.

It seemed like only yesterday you were battling to have more posts than me, didn't take you long to get to 1000!

[AgPete]

Here's a little something I was e-mailed by my family regarding vets. My parents are deeply involved in vet issues, mainly because my step-father is still suffering from injuries he suffered in Vietnam. God bless all the men and women who died serving our country and those that continue to cope with the problems they face after the hell known as war.

SURE, WAVE THE FLAG, BUT VETERANS NEED MORE THAN THAT

Myriam Marquez

April 24, 2003

Military veterans are among the staunchest supporters of U.S. troops in Iraq. Whether they think it was wise or not to go after Saddam Hussein, the vets know firsthand that young men and women overseas need their nation's moral encouragement during wartime.

The old vets also know from experience that the federal government quickly forgets the "support our troops" mantra once the people who risked everything for us come home. Even when they make the military their career, they're an afterthought to politicians -- except, of course, during election years when the pols promise the old vets the world.

Even when the vets' bodies, broken by battles long ago, suffer from all sorts of ailments. Even when their minds have been ravaged by post-traumatic stress disorder. Even once they're dead, leaving spouses who get nickel-and-dimed out of the military-retirement benefits that should be due them but who find out, at age 62, that it's no longer a sure thing.

And so, the national sigh of relief over the few U.S. casualties in this quickie war in Iraq drowns out the cries of injustice to our military veterans. Yet those who are fighting today in the volunteer military will face their own worries in just a few decades, when they realize the government doesn't always keep its promises.

Or, like many veterans exposed to chemicals during the 1991 Gulf War already know, the military will delay, obfuscate or even deny any responsibility for any maladies they might be suffering in just a few short years.

For military retirees since World War I through Korea, those government promises included free medical care. But in the mid-1990s, that policy was changed so that many were forced to buy supplemental care to get medicines and other treatments not covered by Medicare. The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't decided yet whether it will take up the veterans' class-action lawsuit that seeks compensation for those vets who lost benefits. Even now that the policy has been changed again, to a more generous system, retirees aren't always able to get the medicines or treatments they need by the government-backed plan.

For career military who spent 20 or more years in service and were disabled, there's another insult to their injuries. Once they retire, they can't qualify for full military pensions if they also receive disability payments. The government deducts one dollar of their retirement funds for every dollar they earn in disability. Yet disabled vets who served only a four-year stint can go on to work for another federal government agency and still get full retirement benefits, plus their military disability.

Congress finally changed the so-called concurrent receipt law last year, but the Defense Department has yet to figure out the rules of who would benefit. As it is, Congress limited the number of disabled career military who would be covered under the new law to those who either earned a Purple Heart or who the government determines suffer a disability of 60 percent or more.

Many vets are upset at President Bush, who campaigned in 2000 in support of veterans issues only to hide behind tax-cut-induced budget deficits and not give the vets their due. The Uniformed Services Disabled Retirees, the Military Officers Association of America and many other veterans groups continue to work with the White House and Congress to push through needed reforms.

But as the years roll by and they see their benefits cut while the federal budget inflates with pork-barrel projects for members of Congress who've never spent a day in a trench or a night in a bloody battle for their country, the vets grow weary.

By all means, let's support our troops -- today's and yesterday's men and women who deserve a whole lot more than political platitudes and parades on Veterans Day.

[Brillig]

Nice one, Chem - although my personal favorite is a little older:

The Last of the Light Brigade (1891)

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they kuew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighen the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an' we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be conbnued' and 'see next page' o'the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the sconrn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shamme.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made --"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

[FrogMan]

Here's something Joe Bryant from footballguys.com sends out every year in his mailing list...

WHAT IS A VET?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a
jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the
evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of
shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the
soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear
no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia
sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel
carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose
overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the
cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th
parallel.

She or he—is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another—or
didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat—but
has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks
and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each
other's backs.

He is the parade—riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and
medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals
pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose
presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve
the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized
with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket—palsied now and aggravatingly slow—who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold
him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being—a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of
his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not
have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and
he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of
the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country,
just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have
been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU."

"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of
the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us
freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who
has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who
salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is
draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag."

Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

Wow , Really amazing how war can inspire some of the best written poetry .

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

Here's one I found last night about some of wars unsung heroes .NURSES

These are the Veterans of Vietnam we hear nothing about,
and what they went through - but we never say a pout,
when we were real bad beside our beds they were knelt,
keeping us smiling - despite how we felt.

They had no idea of what we'd been through,
and had no idea of what we were returning to,
a lot of us believe that they went through more than us,
because everyday they were ankle deep in the blood and the buts.

As the song was written "and the beat goes on",
but then "9 to 5" was the title of another song,
all they saw was death, destruction and misery,
but yet for us a smiling face was all we could see.

They sat and talked to some during their last surviving hours,
and then supposedly forget them with a long cold shower,
we were wounded, scared and homesick all at one time,
but they never failed to cheer us or give us a good sign.
Yes, if you ask me their blood flows red, white and blue,
dear round eyes what would we have done without you,
so give them the statue they deserve with outs and then,
we'll be able to say once mores,
TOGETHER THEN - TOGETHER AGAIN!

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

Here's one that still holds relevance.
Have a safe and happy Memorial Day.

[FrogMan]

funny you bumped this, I just received "What is a Vet" from Joe Bryant in my footballguys mailing list email...

FM

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

11 November 2004 Let's never forget.

[MizzouRah]

As a vet, I say "Thanks" to all who remember us.



Todd

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

30 May 2005, Remember the fallen and have a safe and happy Memorial Day.