To serve as a soldier, there is nothing more noble or more true,
To defend your home and ones you love, until your life is through...
To live and die for your brothers, could not be more right.
To honor those who marched before, to carry on their fight...
To protect the innocent and the fair, that they may know no strife,
To march away from mother’s love, or father’s warming arm,
Away from children’s longing eyes, or sweethearts gentle charm...
Away from land and home so sweet, maybe never again to see,
With pain so strong and hurt so deep, to march away that they be
free...
To give a life so fair and young, with so much living yet to do,
To trade it for a life of death, to uphold what is true...
To sacrifice one’s innocents, and all he could have done,
That no more in fields of flowers, but fields of bodies run...
To watch their friends with whom they laughed, fall and lie so still,
To learn what it truly means to hate, and for more than duty kill...
To give a part of themselves they can’t get back, though on they may live,
To see in drunk or dream the brothers faces, whose all was called to give...
Some to return without their limbs, some their very soul,
Of all the men to march to war, not one to come back whole!
To lie in bed late at night, and wonder why not me?
To weep for a brother who didn’t make it, his home never again
to see...
To wonder if anyone really understands, or even cares at all,
That they live because others died, that good men had to fall!
To wonder if the banner, brave men saluted everyday,
Is treated with rightful honor, in memory of those who marched away