| RE: Snow Day Badge: Remember the Troops |
 Author: Molly Tarr
Date: 05-28-12 17:27
remembering all my friends who are or were in uniform - Tara who peered across the DMZ in Korea, George who shrugged off explosions in Fallujah, Glenn and Los who flew in the Pacific during WWII, and Dad Airforce supply Sergent, and Grandpa, able seaman who managed to survive where his friends did not, and all the others who I loved, met, or never knew...
Freedom Isn't Free
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!!
--Cadet Major Kelly Strong
Air Force Junior ROTC
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