85 The child has run away and a full-known adult returns

Send us Fan MailThe child has run awayFor a blighted cause todayHe’s joined a crooked queueOf brothers twitchy and newFor a leader they’ve never metHe makes them all a terrible betProve you’re a man, brave and strongYour kinfolk’ll love you as the day is longThey’ll make you monoliths ten feet tallBrass plaques, street names and allIf you’ll go out and point your gunPull the trigger on dirty old HunRuskie, Jap, Nip, Ching or Arab to blameWhatever the current contestant’s nameOff the child goes, sure he’s an adultProtecting his country without a faultSo he trains, learns and obeys“Yes Sir, no Sir,” the right words he saysJumps and spins and sharply salutesReady to savage all those foreigner brutesSent on a boat with sweat-stained matesTalking up tough, kill everyone we hatesThe young boy imagines he’s grown to a manA warrior, a fighter and a dastardly planOverseas travel, true glory and goreSaving my comrades, country and moreWith a bang, a slash and a mighty blowThe enemy’ll run, never again to showThe world’ll be safer, peaceful and kindFrom our actions, I know you’ll findAnd up goes his name on pedestals so brightForever engraved, remembered and rightBut we landed in muck, trudged through swampThe food’s no better and clothing is dampWalking forever, no enemy aroundTill day six when the mines we foundLost feet, arms, guts and whole matesForced to march on, no logical debatesCame we upon the enemy’s camp, they saidBut just a village, livestock all deadWomen pleading us to save their kidBut won’t tell us where their men is hidSo we shot a few, get ‘em up talkingThey didn’t know so we kept on walkingAfter burning their houses, corrals and cropsAnd firing our volleys till every child dropsOur rations are now low, stinking so rottenThough my vomit’s not from the illness I’ve gottenBut from grief and all the bloody dead wasteAll the good people we’ve gunned and chasedMinding their own damned business and livesWhile we interfere between husbands and wivesSimple good folk, never a bad wordWe treat them like a low-down dog turdWould we do that to our own kin back home?No we wouldn’t; we’d leave them aloneBut for this big man, his pedestal bright shinesSpilling his phlegm, on brash words he dinesFor his loud lies, loose lipped storiesOf enemies abroad and whigs hate toriesHell, it took me fifty years of PTSDUnravelling my trauma from a worn out chestyAnd finding the truth of a war-loving worldFile by file the dirty deeds are unfurledFound we fought no enemy, not for our nationWas a senseless pantomime for a man’s libationYes, I’ve come to see there’s no enemy out thereJust our own demons we want others to bear‘Stead of taking charge of the victim withinWe spew invective, wage wars we never can winThe child left for glory in yellow Viet NamTook a long time to return a full-known man.