Beginning with the Korean war and on we have been fighting proxy wars, these are wars for other countries and for people who don't have the will to fight for themselves. The American people have somehow been duped into believing that it is for the survival of our own country with God Bless America and a lot of flag waving. However it is really all about keeping the military industrial complex in the chips, protecting oil interests abroad, and nation building all of which is none of our business and is a perversion of the US Constitution. Meanwhile those self aggrandizing people on both sides of the aisle in Washington, DC don't mind sending our brothers, cousins and our children off to far away places to die for an ambiguous cause. I was a proud army paratrooper during the Vietnam War, my friends were killed right and left and we killed a lot of little people for no good reason. I wrote this poem many years ago, it tells it like it is.
Verdant Woods
Jungles smelling of decay, sweating, suffocating heat,
Stinking fungus, rotting sox, wet and tired feet.
Dengue and malarial fever, liver flukes and leeches,
Those verdant woods a far cry from Vung Tau's sandy beaches.
Scorpions, Cobras, great variety of very poisonous snakes,
Some strike to kill some cause blindness like the Banded Krait.
Food's sweet residue on our breath, lips gnawed by rats,
Stealthy nighttime creatures, rodents large as cats.
Mosquitoes in the millions buzzing noisily around our heads,
Wondering if morning will find us all alive or dead.
Watching intently in the darkness for VC and NVA,
Praying earnestly to God to see the light of day.
Stench of blood and rotting corpses lay all round about,
Nostrils recoil while maggots roil the course of war in doubt.
Demonstrations in the streets, flags burning way back there,
There is nothing in the records saying war is ever fair.
173rd Airborne Brigade (Sep)
Republic of South Vietnam
