by D.D. Hostler
United States Military Academy, Class of 1968

 

In other fields the poppies grow between new crosses, row on row...

 

Wearing the green...and the spittle of a people who didn’t seem to care,
Betwixt and between, in the middle of a patriot’s dream and despair.

 

We were clad in the cloth of our country, then furled in the flag of her dead
By bullets, abrupt and perfunctory, we were stripped of the lives we’d have led....

 

If you listen intently, you’ll hear us, as we shout from our silent repose,
In voices as loud and as clear as lips muted by dying can pose,

 

That we like our fathers before us, wish not to have perished in vain.
So we call on the living in chorus, again, and again, and again...

 

To fashion our passing a purpose and desist from affixing the blame,
To learn more from the war which last tore us that the wars which preceded can claim....

 

To vow that in facing the future, on a knee with solemnity bent,
To carefully weigh-out your causes before the first life is spent...

 

And to swear a renewed oath each season, before an Almighty God,
That our sons won’t be sent without reason to join us here under the sod...

 

...if ye break faith with we who dies, we shall not rest....

 

written for the class of 1968 20 Year Reunion - held at the Vietnam Memorial

(Emphasis ours)