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Submitted Poems

I never met you mate, but your name was not unknown
I never shook your hand mate, but together we had grown.
We lived in different countries but we fought in the same war
And we served at different times mate, upon that foreign shore.

We were brothers, one and all mate; no matter what our creed
We fought and held each other mate, whenever there was need
We were in that foreign country and never forgot the things we saw
And the brotherhood there formed mate, would never be foresworn.

You’ve travelled to the bridge where all honoured warriors tread
You’re now on sentry duty mate; you’ve forged the way ahead
Keep your eyes alert mate; keep watch on we who’re left behind
For we’re in a dangerous field mate; a field that has been mined.

I’ll meet you at the bridge mate, and together we’ll fight no more
We’ll remember all the good times mate, and recall the times of war
We’ll remember that we lived and we’ll remember those who died
But mate, we’ll remember most of all, all those who for us cried.

©Copyright March 2, 2004 by Anthony W. Pahl

Visit Tony's site IWVPA listed on links page

Angel of Sorrow

An Angel of sorrow has spread her wings over no mans land

Her tears they fall from the sky

For some men this means that they will die

This is why the angel she does cry

The bombs and bullets start to rain down

The angel’s wings they beat to the sound

As the bombs and bullets fall to the ground

The men hide their faces deep down in rain filled holes

They pray out loud for their souls

They are full of despair and see no way out

As they wait for the shout to move on out

They must be brave and face her with pride

For there is nowhere to hide

For they shall be remembered

Through song and verse and a day of remembrance

Over the top the men must go

They are ordered to move upon a whistle blow

The rattle of the guns comes over from the Huns

The men they fall one by one

The screams and horror are all around

No glory on this day is to be found

The Angel of sorrow she weeps more tears

As the men try to use their fears

But they cannot all hide from her tears

She cannot see the use of this war

To set man against man

To fight over a piece of no mans land

So many lives lost and at such a cost

One life too many

Who really does suffer the loss?

The Angel of sorrow is kept so busy

For man will not learn

We are off to war again

Different time and place

Will we not stop until we have wiped out the human race?

The Angel of sorrow is kept so busy

For man will not learn

We are off to war again

Different time and place

Will we not stop until we have wiped out the human race?

copyrighted John Sinclair

a Scottish soldier

Let it go

Let it go

I can’t I have seen so much

In my young life

I am only twenty one

Let it go

I can’t it hurts so much

I close my eyes

And I see the horror’s again

Let it go

I want to but no one understands

They do not know how I feel

They do not know what is real

Let it go

I want your help

But I don’t know how to ask

I hide behind this mask

Let me in

I am your brother your friend your comrade

I have walked your path also

Let me in

So that your life can begin again

It is time to let it go

So my brother my friend my comrade

Let it go

copyrighted John Sinclair

a Scottish soilder

My Friend That Went

I have a friend who was in a war,

I honestly don't know what he was fighting for.

They said "Democracy, Freedom for ALL".

But what about the boys who answered their call?

Many lost their lives, many their minds,

For a war we forgot or tried to hide.

My friend is a hero, along with many others,

Over in that land they gained many brothers.

Kindred in fire, battles and blood,

The memories so deep, the recall where they stood,

when this one was killed or that one bled.

Memories that haunt them each night in bed.

We should have done more to honor them all,

More than just put a name on a wall.

Remember we sent them to a foreign place,

Brought them back, not heroes, but to so-called disgrace.

It was our mistake that sent them all.

We owe them more than a place on a wall.

So next time you see one of our honored vets,

Take off your hat, shake his hand, and remember ...

While you sat home, HE WENT.

MW '07

To My Vietnam Vet-- You,Me & PTSD

Some days are good. Some are bad. I never know from one day to the next what to expect from you. I sometimes don't know from minute to minute how you will react to even the most mundane daily happenings. Your moods change from minute to minute and I have to make split second judgments on what I should say or do. It's like walking on eggshells every minute of my life. Even the most innocent of remarks can send you off into one of your rages. The stress is sometimes more than I can bear.

Today is a bad day. They seem to come along just when things are going pretty good, or at least seem to be. I know that the anger isn't my fault and that I did not cause it but I must bear the brunt of it until this current crisis passes. I am between you and the children. I am between you and society. I am between you and the world. But each time I am put in that position, I get a little weaker. I get a little closer to falling off the edge. I die a little more inside.

I love you. I know that deep down inside, no matter what is going on, you love me too. I know that these terrible times are caused by memories too painful for you to really remember but too traumatic for you to forget. Sometimes, at night, I watch you. I see you toss and turn, I hear you talking to those whose final moments you witnessed and can never forget. I watch you in your communion with your ghosts from Vietnam. I hear you cry and wish that the tears would wash your memories away. Although you aren't aware of me, I am there beside you through your most terrible nightmares. Each time I hear you cry out in anguish, its like I'm being stabbed through the heart. I cry with you sometimes and you don't even know. Night after night I go with you back in time, to another place, when you were young and afraid. But I cannot let you know that I'm there.

When the nightmare gets too bad, and you wake up screaming, I pretend to be sleeping. But I still watch as you get up, light your cigarette and begin your nightly patrol. I see you checking behind the doors for unseen enemies. I see you check the windows. I listen to you go through the entire house as if some deadly adversary lurked in every shadow. I lay quietly, feigning sleep, praying that you will know who I am when you return to bed. I hold my breath as you reenter the bedroom, wondering if tonight is the night you will think I am the enemy and if indeed you will try to kill me. Some nights you stand over me, staring down at me as if you don't know me. Those are the nights that I fear the most. I feel your presence and your eyes on me. That's when I pray. It always feels like those moments may be my last. But I'll die loving you.

I wish there was some magic cure for the disease called Vietnam. I wish the past could be buried and forgotten. But I know that it can't be. I know that I will fight this war until death claims one of us. Sometimes it actually occurs to me that death will be our only release from this nightly hell we both go through ..... seperately yet together.

Days are just as bad, the nightmares become the flashbacks. There's nothing I can say or do to make you forget. All I can hope for is that you will someday be able to cope with all of the memories. But it scares me that you sometimes see our world through younger eyes. Those eyes don't see the same world as I do. The world seen through them is far away....through time and distance. The people in that world are trying to kill you and I know you will try to kill them first. But what if it is one of the children that you are seeing as the enemy? Would I have the power to stop you?

I always know I am in for a particularly bad time when you start drinking. If you would only stop after a few beers, it might not be so bad. But you never do. It seems that when the alcohol hits you, the ghosts all come out of their hiding places to haunt you even if it isn't night. I cannot even begin to count the holes in the walls and doors that have been patched over the years. I've probably gone through a dozen sets of glassware, not to mention the good crystal and china set that were left to me by my mother. Every pane of glass in the house has been replaced at least once after you have either punched it or thrown something through it. It's a joke having a waterbed, really. I must have been crazy buying it. It has more patches on it than a patchwork quilt. But the broken things can be repaired. Its the shredding of my soul that cannot be fixed. And every experience tears it up just a little bit more.

Why do I stay with you? Because I know that you are a good man inside. I know that the man I fell in love with is in that body and most of the time that's the one I see. I know that you cannot help what this terrible affliction called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does to you. I know it isn't me that you're mad at, it's just that I'm available for you to vent your anger and frustrations on . And I pray that someday the effects of Vietnam will fade away although I know it just won't happen. I must have hope or I couldn't bear it. I love you and would want you to stay by me if some horrible affliction affected me. I married you for better or for worse. Even if it seems that there are more worse times, I get through it by remembering the good times. I am lucky enough to have friends who are going through the same thing with their Vietnam vets and are always there to give me the strength and support I need during the periods of crisis that come. God helps me, too.

I know that it hurts you when you face all the things that are out of control in your life, especially those times when you lash out at me, both physically as well as verbally. I know that you wish you could be different. Just know, sweetheart, that I will stand by you through everything, good or bad, and we can never give up. We are still fighting wars.......yours was in Vietnam and mine is the Vietnam left in you. We will not surrender. We will fight for the rest of our lives, if necessary, but we will survive this TOGETHER. In the end, we will be the victors.

I will be your rock when things are shaky. I will be your listening ear when you need to talk. I will be your strength when you are weak. I will hold you close when you need comfort. I will be your friend when you have no one to turn to. I will be your DMZ when the pressure is too great. I will be your commander when you need direction. I will be your pointman when we face life's highways. I will be your medic when your pain is too great to bear.

But, remember, my unsung hero, I will be your wife throughout it all.

Written by Tina Thomas

Wife of a Vietnam combat vet

(Note from the author - It is with a sad heart that I must tell you that my beloved husband, Rick Thomas, passed away June 1, 2005 of lung cancer due to Agent Orange. Before he died however, he had sought help for his PTSD and had become the wonderful man I knew he could be. We had many years of happiness and peace before God called him home. The saddest part was that he became another victim of Vietnam.

Sleep well, my Beloved, and be at peace for Eternity. I know that one day I will again be at your side and that we will once again be joined as one at the foot of the Throne of Our God. ....Tina)

E-mail Tina

Leaves flag from each visitor (from country they live in)

This one is not a poem but needs placed here

VINDICATION OF THE VIETNAM

VETERANS

YOU WERE RIGHT

AMERICA WAS WRONG

by Resa Kirkland
January 07, 2005

One of my beloved Vietnam Veterans, Michael Galindo, sent me an email the other day with a humorous idea for a t-shirt: If the Vietnam Veteran lost the Vietnam War, how come we don’t speak Vietnamese?

I laughed. It was logical, it was reasonable, and it was undeniable. But it got me to thinking a lot about my Vietnam Vets. Actually, the real time war coverage of Gulf War II had already done that, because there before me were so many of the impossible paradoxes that these men had tried to deal with 30 years ago, played out in full color with no leftist slant.

What had caused the Vietnam Vet to shed many a bitter tear and fight for his broken heart with a vigor unique to his war was finally being made indisputably clear to the civilian pukes who had the audacity to judge and condemn these good and decent men placed into an impossible situation.

I was a baby when the war was going on. I can remember being about six or seven, seeing the long-haired, scrawny, filthy and vile hippies, united in their utterly useless existence, carrying their placards, shouting angrily and smelling funny. They were a sharp contrast to the few minutes of news reports a week from a steamy jungle in a strange land, and those focused, determined, and courageous men who were having the truth of what they were trying to do twisted, perverted, and bastardized by a media and film industry who hated them and all that they stood for, and for some reason beyond my child-like reasoning, had chosen to side with the bottom-dwellers of society. Putting aside the sins of the politics and politicians who had put the khaki warriors in that strange place, it was plain to an innocent child—even back then—who was to be admired, who truly believed what they claimed to believe, who was honorably right and doing what was right--and who was wickedly, treacherously, despicably wrong.

I would listen to the moral dilemmas presented to these good and decent young American boys—stories of the VC using civilians as human shields, dressing up as civilians-or worse, forcing women and children to do their dirty work!--and pretending to be innocent by-standers just long enough for one of our boys to let his guard down and pay for it with his life, terrifying and demoralizing those who saw it, rendering them impotent as they struggled between the innate human need for their own self-preservation, and that decent, Godly side of Americans which can scarcely bring us to kill an innocent.

Oh what a wretched, horrible thing to ask of young men raised in a land of Judeo-Christian principles, a love for the individual human life, and the freedom to choose between right and wrong! I remember, even with the limited understanding of a little girl, thinking as the soldiers tried to present their side, begging us to try to comprehend the situation they were in: They’re right…what are they supposed to do when the enemy uses civilians as attackers, pretending to be just a pawn in the war one moment and murdering them the next? It was an impossible situation, confusing and terrifying, and one that called for empathy, understanding, answers, help, or at least forgiveness, but was instead misrepresented and outright lied about to the world back home by the malevolent media and the Hollow Heads of Hollywood for decades to come.

What we Americans chose to ignore--then and now--is the fact that the enemy will always use our strengths against us, not just our weaknesses. And the American love for human life and the innocent face of war is a well-known and glorious strength. The best illustration of this was the treacherous and fabricated No Gun Ri story from the early days of the ongoing Korean War. I never saw a single report that even came close to explaining the truth of that situation-and certainly no stories that would go on to receive the now-tarnished Pulitzer Prize!

I had long heard from my Korean War Veterans who were there in the early days of the war that the North Korean Army was ordered to go into villages as they scourged south, forcefully conscript the young men, and then use the elderly, women, and children to form circles around them from which they would fire upon the Americans and ROK soldiers. Kim Il Sung-Fearless Leader and Major Dic-understood the "foolish sentimentality" that American soldiers attached to the individual human life. "They will hesitate to fire upon unarmed and screaming civilians," he explained to his generals. "We will use their hesitation to gain the upper hand right from the start."

It worked. In the beginning, our beautiful American warriors couldn’t bring themselves to fire into a crowd of civilians, and it cost many of them their lives. But what it cost those upright and heartbroken men who survived was far worse. I know that most people--vets especially--believe that the true heroes never came home. For years, I agreed whole-heartedly. No Gun Ri taught me that this wasn’t true. Now understand, those who died forever wear the Victor’s Crown. I will never-in this life or the next-dispute that fact. But their moment of agony was brief; their glory eternal. I am totally convinced that the price those who survived pay is far worse, and far more glorious. The best way to explain that is, as always, with an example.

I remember Jimmy Bowen of El Paso, Texas, telling me that the dreams that haunt him now are not so much the offenses against his buddies or himself, but the dying screams of those women and children and old men who cried out when he finally had to make a horrifying choice--shoot back or die. It was from his story that I decided that the greatest evil of war isn’t what our men have done to them by the enemy, or even to their friends-although that is evil enough. No, the evil of war is what it forces good, decent, Godly men to do and become; not because they want to, but because in order to heed the powerful survival instinct, they have to. Now Mr. Bowen had friends who died-whose faces remain forever youthful and in front of his eyes-but his sacrifice of never forgetting what he had to do all those years ago was a far more agonizing and lingering one.

This was the genesis of the No Gun Ri tale. There were no trigger-happy CO’s, no murderous GI’s playing with their big-boy toys, no generals on power trips. It was, as always, decent American boys forced into indecent situations by an evil enemy.

This is why the cries of "Baby Killers!" and "Murderer!" so wound the heart of the soldier—especially the Vietnam Vet. It is because he knows the truth behind the lie, and wants only for us to understand, and for God to redeem. It is because even though he knows the truth-that he had to do what he had to do based on the logic and reason of the situation-deep down, the anguish of it all causes him to believe for a moment that he is what they say he is. And he weeps bitter tears.

It is for his sacrifice, his pain that I say this now: My brothers who fought in Vietnam, you were right; America was wrong. Forgive us, Vietnam Vet. Forgive us for allowing ourselves to be manipulated and lied to by Walter Cronkite and CNN and Martin Scorsese and Hanoi Jane. Forgive us for defying logic and reason and asking you to make impossible choices for which we would hold you brutally and unfairly accountable. Forgive us for being so easily led, even in the face of logic and truth. Forgive our cowardice in not fighting for your vindication when you had fought so very hard for what we had taught you to believe. Forgive us for setting you up, abandoning you, and then being too gutless to admit it and carry some of your burden for you that you might heal and move on. Forgive us for accusing you of being cry-babies, whiners, and cowards when all you wanted was for us to see what you had no choice but to see. This was our failing, our sin, not yours, but we made you carry it anyway. I am so sorry that I had my perception of you colored by the leftist-controlled media and entertainment industry who went to any means-and gleefully so-to hammer the final nail in your coffin. In spite of such treachery, you not only survived , but banded together like the brothers that you are, and did what we should have done: recognized and appreciated one another and what you tried to do-and remembered, honored, and revered those who knew because they were there…and still are. You served America and freedom gloriously; we failed you miserably, and I am so very sorry.

There can be no denying now, as we watch the children of the Vietnam generation acting reasonably in the face of the exact thing their fathers and grandfathers faced. It is because of the determination of the Vietnam Vet that this new generation of American warrior will be cheered, not vilified. It is because of technology and the mistakes we made with these past vets who had their gift bastardized that we see what they see, face what they face, react the way they react. It is a new war, a new age, but an old and at long last vindication for those who tried in vain to get us to understand what we now watch on FOX. It is for this-today’s war and yesterday’s agony-that I humbly thank and beg the forgiveness of those who fought and weren’t allowed to win, and had to pay so heavy a price. You deserve this peace, this rest that should at least partially come with this vindication. You will never get it from Hollywood Hell or the Perverted Press, but I swear to you now, you will get it from those of us who actually matter.

You were then the Vietnam Veteran…you are now the Vietnam Victor.

Keep the faith, bros, and in all things courage.

Pops World

Submitted Poems

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This one is not a poem but needs placed here

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