One Loss Too Many

Standing in the slimy marsh

Waiting for relief from the weather so harsh

Contact is a daily occurrence

Believing that this whole thing is a mental transference.

Rain, filth, steam, leeches and bugs

The heavy load that one lugs

A jump at every sound

Peace, sleep and rest can’t be found.

It’s been such a long time

To see my family is a dream of mine

But the reality of war rushes back with a shock

When a bullet misses and strikes a rock.

No one is safe it seems

No escape from this hell even in your dreams.

How long have we been strangled by war

Now the rain begins to pour.

Wrinkled, cracked, and bloody feet filled with pain

Clothes that are caked with filth and wet with rain

Thirty young men on an unending mission

Seems it only ends with Death's permission.

Last night we lost one of our own

An old timer named Sergeant Sloan.

He was an old timer I guess you would say

He turned thirty years old just the other day.

No time to think about that now

We have to get out of here but I don’t know how.

It’s up to me to find a way to a clearing for relief

A mere twenty years old with twenty-nine men what grief.

If only I had listened and studied more carefully

Maybe I would be fit to be lead more logically.

These men are depending on me

My hope is that my despair they can’t see.

With a desperate effort and a simple plan

We must find a way for the choppers to land.

Fifteen days without relief or support

These men of mine are brothers of a sort.

Now I awaken from the same dream

Too late to change a single thing.

I live with this same guilt

No one can change the pain I felt.

Oh, we got out with only one loss they say

But I wonder if his family would feel this way.

The one lost like so many before

Mounts and multiplies with each like the one before.

©David R. Alexander

December 12, 2002

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