On the midnight plains of time, where the sands are shifting still, if you bend your head just right you can hear a lonesome whipoorwill.

Years come and go and men live and die, but heroes are what you make them in the midst of battle's cry.

In an era of false peace, in these unsettled times, remember those who fought and died in a war thought of as a crime.

In the mind's eye the blind they see, and the lame they walk, and if you look deep enough, in the mind's eye, the dead they talk.

Over and over scenes replay, a worn out record of a distorted dream, the dread, the fear, the sense of loss, the awful explosions, the smell of dead flesh, their conscious thoughts and worst nightmares enmesh.

What of the survivors, the ones who came back whole, or the ones that came back with wounds deep in body and in soul.

Forgive and forget was the country's stand, no welcome mat, nor cheering crowds, not even a out of tune brass band for those who escaped the bowels of hell.

Only insults hurled, and no victory cries, the deafening silence left them wondering should we all have died, and the country said, "Oh well!"

Yet time repeats itself, as all history shows, the guns, the bombs, the soul shattering blows, of war, that fearful hellish thing, and again as before the victory bells will not ring.

So remember the souls of the young men, and women, who braved the terror, the mistrust, the uncertain plight, they fought in the war because their Commander-in-Chief told them it was right.

No different are they than their fathers before, and their only mistake is that theirs is an unpopular war.

 ©1985 Lloydene Fay Hill