A Different Christmas Poem
The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
my daughter beside me, angelic in rest. The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep, secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
Put down your pack; brush the snow from your sleeve,
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December,"
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Who stand at the front against any and all?
"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright, y our family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least, "Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done, for being away from your wife and your son."
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone, to stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead, to know you remember we fought and we bled.
It seems all too little for all that you've done, for being away from your wife and your son."
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone, to stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead, to know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust, that we mattered to you as you mattered to us."
PLEASE, w ould you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S. Service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.
LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30t h Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq
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