Combat

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 20, Who Won?

It’s Day Twenty at NaPo where the prompt challenged me to write a poem that recounts a historical event.

Who Won?

Some people think we,
the USA,
won every battle during
the war in Viet Nam.

When attrition
and body count mean more
than maneuver and tactic,

When pawns are used as bait,
it’s chess, not real life.
Has the Army ever
told the truth
at the first chance given?

Classmate Tom, only 20 when drafted
and forced to war
died in the battle Xa Cam My,
near Saigon, Viet Nam,
on the 11th day of April 1966.

In-country only three weeks,
along with nearly 40 of his mates,
many others butchered and maimed
for life—they now can barely tell the story.

Was it the short artillery fire,
the cleverness of the Vietcong,
the foolishness of the USA officers?

Attack after attack by the VC brought more
American blood to earth and more death, until—
not so mercifully, Charley decided
to move on and to fight another day.

Nine years later Saigon fell
and Viet Nam became
one country and America’s
government found other things
to lie about.

Like in 1966 when Private Tom
and 35 virtual strangers died
in a forbidden foreign place
fighting for his Purple Heart
and Combat Infantry Badge.

Twenty years—where did they go?
Twenty years, and for what?
The tag on my shirt says
“Made in the Socialist
Republic of Viet Nam.”

Look both ways and wonder, will it ever be over?
Ignore the gaps at your own peril
so you can go back home in a metal box and declare victory,
or at least the promised “honorable peace.”

Note: While the reference in the poem to 20 years is the full duration of the US involvement in the Viet Nam conflict, it is also the age of my classmate when he was killed. The Battle of Xa Cam My was 58 years ago.

Sammi’s Weekender #333 (Whisper)

Click on graphic for Sammi’s page and more writings.

The soldier whispered
into the radio,

we’re surrounded.
need help, now.
target on my coords.

She heard the shell
coming,
but not the explosion.

Look both ways in combat. Mind the gaps, but war is war.
Take many of them with you when you go.

 

Capt. Nargis Kabiri, commander of Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division Artillery. She is the first female field artillery commander for the 3rd Infantry Division (US Army).

Sammi’s Weekender #217 (requisite)

Click to go to Sammi’s blog.

Tread At Your Own Risk

American men and women at war,
fighters. May I call them warriors?
For their military service
we want to thank them.
Combatants
share experiences
only they understand.
Only they feel it.

Requisites are hated enemies,
courage, weapons, desire for glory, fear,
comrades, pride; and a cause
to die for, one worth killing for.

There’s more.
Much more.
They carry much.

To fear death, or not? To love
and despise simultaneously?
Is war forever part of humanity?
Are we the only creatures
that kill our own for no reason? Just to kill.
To cause death unnecessarily?
Is that combat?

Look both ways for glory and dishonor.
Mind the gaps between mind, heart, and soul.

 

Poetry: Another Morning

Awakened hours before sunrise,
he must guard, lest they come and kill;
this boy filled with fear and shock,
barely 19, taught to hate and kill,
now loyal to his clan, this new family,
his only friends, his only protection
as war has become his real world.

Miserable, hardened in every way,
unsympathetic, unimaginably deadly,
drawn to flashing light, learning
what he never wanted to know, addicted
to the battle, to the intoxicating fight.

He celebrates life with death, seeks random
revenge where none is possible,
has forgotten questions, never asks why,
lives in his personal accepted hated hell.

Sunrise lifts despair from his soul.
He smiles, alone, at the light of life,
happy to survive one more night.
He looks for answers, for that part of him,
now dead because he kills without a care.
Can he ever again be who he was born to be?

Look both ways to find another view.
Mind the gaps where questions decay away.

 

Poetry: dVerse Open Link Night #270 (my first)

Thanks to Mish and the folks at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, for Open Link Night #270 (click for link). This poem messes with where my head’s been lately.

***

Combatant

It could have been me.
A nod, a blink, an okay
and the next forty-five
years …

had I not been killed, maimed
or driven insane
(as many of us were)

… would not have been anything
like what I look back to today,
fifty-six long years hence,
with contrition, feeling the loss;

Personal, hidden, illogical
survivor syndrome. I can’t
make sense of it. The feeling
of a warrior who wasn’t.

Life choices often made
thoughtlessly, in a blink.
I could be dead. Change the past?
Not on your life or mine.

***

Look both ways at guilt for life: fortune or folly.
Mind the gaps in the mindless wars with reality.

A to Z Blog Challenge Theme Reveal (2018)

Let’s roll out monsters, goblins, ghouls, and all the fantastic creatures that existed in the minds of men and women from before anyone could write until the present day. Fantasy is not fake when we believe it; and we have for over 100,000 years of human imagination from which to draw. Unfortunately, writing is only about five or six thousand years old. But going way back in time, our innate human ability to imagine is phenomenal. That is my reveal: fantasy creatures displayed front and center.

From angels to zombies, I will select fantastic creatures from legend, fairy tales, fables, and myth. From poems, books, and stories, and from cultures around the world; I will package up those delectably stunning and enchanting fantasy life forms and bring them to you in words and forms.

During April we all do a lot of reading and writing. If you count taxes, arithmetic too. It is a busy, but fun-filled month. I shall attempt brevity and will only present one or two creatures per day beginning with “A” on Sunday, the first day of April, for the 2018 A to Z Blog Challenge.

As my trailer here, I present two Celtic kings: The Forest King, better known as the Oak King or sometimes as Green Man, along with his nemesis, The Holly King, often depicted as a woodsy version of Santa Clause.

The Forest or Oak King
The Holly King

Semiannually, these two battle and fight to the death for supremacy. One time per year, each defeats the other. Depending on the culture and beliefs, a final battle is on summer and winter solstices, or, and more logically, at the time of the Fall or Spring equinoxes. During summer, the Oak King reigns. The Holly King kills the Oak King and reigns in the winter. It is the classic holly vs. ivy symbolic battle called out in King Henry VIII’s, Green Groweth The Holly.

The Oak and Holly Kings Battle

The battle is also echoed many times in other myth and folklore such as the fights between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or Lugh and Balor in Celtic legend. In all cases, one must die for the other to triumph.

Regarding such battles and the killing of one king, god, or man, George Frazer wrote,”But we have seen that the very value attached to the life of the man-god necessitates his violent death as the only means of preserving it from the inevitable decay of age.” They are two essential parts of the whole (seasonal reality) that battle all year long. Despite being enemies, without one, the other would no longer exist. Sort of reminds one of yin and yang, doesn’t it?

Look both ways in all seasons of life. Mind well the gaps.

Note: I will be participating in the National Poetry Writing Month challenge separately. Those poems will be identified as NaPoWriMo. This means that during April “Our Literary Journey” will have two posts each day, and one on Sundays after the first.