We Were Soldiers

[Martinez]

BMT asked if I could find a place for this on one of the boards I manage...

We Were Soldiers

That's the way it is, that's what we were.

We put it simply, without swagger, without brag, in those three plain words. We speak them softly, just to ourselves, just for ourselves.

Speak those three words anywhere in the world, and many who hear will recognize their meaning.

Listen, and you can hear voices echoing through them: solemnly swear to "protect and defend".

Other words that sprang white-hot from bloody lips, shouts of "Medic," whispers of "Oh God,"

Forceful words of "Follow Me," and "What’s the matter, soldier, you want to live forever?"

Laughing words, and words as cold as January ice, words that when spoken, were meant.

The echoes of "We Were Soldiers." If you can't hear those echoes, you weren't, if you can, you were.

You can hear the cadences of Gettysburg, or Arlington honoring not a man, but a Soldier, perhaps forgotten by his nation, but not by his Brothers.

You can hear those echoes as you walk your post, go to "The Wall", visit a VA hospital, hear the mournful sounds of Taps, or gaze upon the white crosses, row upon row.

But they aren’t just words; they're a way of life, a pattern of living, or a way of dying. They gave you the right to hope, to dream, to pray; the obligation to serve.

These are some of the meanings of those three words, meanings we don't tally, or even list.

Only in the stillness of a moonless night, or the quiet of a Sunday afternoon, or in the thin dawn of a new day, when our world is close about us, do they rise up in memories and stir in our sentient hearts.

And, we are remembering Anzio, Normandy, Holland, The Bulge, Wake Island, Bataan, Iwo Jima, Inchon, Chosin, Pork Chop and Heartbreak Ridge, Chu Lai, Tet, the Iron Triangle, Ashau Valley, Mogadishu, and many other places long forgotten by our civilian friends.

They're plain words, simple words.

You could carve them on stone; or you could carve them on the mountain ranges. You could sing them to the tune of "Yankee Doodle." But you needn't.

You needn't do any of those things, for those words are graven in the hearts of Veterans, every sound, every syllable.

If you must, write them, put them on my Stone. But when you speak them, speak them softly, proudly, and we will hear you, for "We were Soldiers."