This poem was passed on to me by one of the Samizdata ‘resting contributors’ and I felt it deserves a holiday season slot here. I have no idea if it is ‘genuine’ but I suspect it is. One way or the other, it says something worth saying and so I give you 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.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me,and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.,
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said
“Its really all right, I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.”
“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed,
“That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘Nam’,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your 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.
“Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
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, would 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 us 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
30th Naval Construction Regiment OIC,
Logistics Cell One Al Taqqadum, Iraq
If anyone knows Jeff Giles, let him know we thought enough of his sentiments to make sure they are seen by a wide audience.
Excellent stuff, Dale. Very fine sentiments indeed.
The real reason for the season.
Doesn’t look like it’s LCDR Giles, looks like it’s Michael Marks, http://iwvpa.net/marksm/a_soldie.php
(found it through snopes).
Fine sentiments perhaps, but that is absolutely fucking awful poetry. And there are few things worse than really terrible poetry. I’m not even gonna fisk it, it is so dreadful it hurts my (pain receptor free) frontal cortex.
It makes Hallmark read like William fucking Shakespeare.
But I will include a link to something which is actually good, technically good, regardless of the nobility of the sentiment…
http://d-sites.net/english/yeats.htm
Now that’s poetry. It may be about bird-rape but it is technically brilliant.
I’m bristled by the envoi. When was the celebration of Christmas in the United States last plausibly endangered by armed force? Some time in the 1980s? The 1970s? The 1960s?
The implicit assertion that what government is doing (and what its servants do, therefore), whether legitimate or not in rational terms, is to protect fundamental things about our way of life, converges very rapidly on the sentimentality of fascism. Of course they want to feel everything they do is inherently valuable, but US servicement are volunteers. And their activities are strategic projection of force not direct defence of anyone’s hearth and home.
Likewise British troops: this is not an anti-American point but an anti-sentimental, anti-patriotic point. I’d be accept this line as honest from an IDF conscript (or for that matter an Iraqi insurgent), someone who can reasonably believe hearth and home are under immediate threat and it is their reluctant duty to put themselves in danger. Similarly, I can emphasise with Kipiling’s Tommy (also a volunteer) in his complaint about inconsistent treatment. But spare me self-justifying cant from people who have chosen a role knowing that encompasses severe personal danger and the obligation to kill and maim others.
If the president of Walmart said he and his staff were glad to put up with the hard work and long hours in order to prevent Americans from starving, then it would be dismissed as irrelevant PR nonsense, not circulated reverently through the blogosphere.
Uh, Guy, with all due respect, fuck off and die.
I disagree Guy. The rough men on the border *are* defending us. We’re living in a house together and noone else will take out the garbage. It’s been piling up awhile. So we’re in the process of taking it out to the dump where it belongs.
Perhaps watching 3000 of your fellow citizens die because of a bunch of scum bags unworthy of sharing the same solar system with human beings gives one a differenet attitude towards these things.
I look at every bit of trash we bury over there as an investment in global cleanliness and safety.
Someone has to do the job and I can not find the words to express the level of respect I have for those who are doing the job for us all.
I also note todays date. It is unfortuneately now only one of two dates which will live in infamy.
Guy, I agree with your opinion that they are doing there job up to a point. But there is a draft. It is never called that and it applies only to people that have already served, but it is involuntary. The US gov made a lot of promises to people to get them to enlist. People enlisted for fixed periods of time. They then intended to return to civilian life, join their families, raise their children and do all the normal things civilians do.
Uncle Sam had his fingers crossed. Like a shady used car salesman, there was some fine print in a law somewhere that said essentially “your promises count, the US gov’s don’t.” These people are having their lives completely put on hold. Irreplacable moments in their children’s lives are passing while they are defending us. Perhaps in their parent’s lives as well. Time that can’t be returned to them.
It has been upheld in court –
These guys appear to have been deliberately mislead by the recruiters into thinking they could sign up for a year.
It has never been in our nation’s history that the National Guard was intended to be a standing army. In fact, the name is “Ready Reserve“. They are the reserves for the regular army that is not being restaffed. They are serving the role of defacto regular army. This war has already dragged on almost as long as the US was in World War II. These people are in effect being drafted for additional terms. And we do owe them a debt of gratitude that exceeds that of soldiers serving just the stint(s) they knowingly signed up for.
I’m guessing that you probably will recognize this distinction. Many of the soldiers are brave professionals doing a job they agreed to for terms they agreed to. Many more are giving irreplacible parts of their lives that they had already promised to their families. Perhaps some others of you out there may elaborate on the details of this ‘draft’. My understanding is that this policy is the primary reason that new enlistments are inadequate to staff needs.
Guy’s point about the sentimentality of the verse (I cannot call it poetry) is vey well taken.
His pint about the way sentimentlaity shades into fascism should be obvious to anyone with a set of eyes. One word for you: Edelweiss.
However, everyone else is right, that the peace and prosperity of all the little hobbits back home rests on the protection of the military. Society is made up of sheep and sheepdogs, without remainder. People who sacrifice themselves for the security of others are the sheepdogs, and people who rely on others for protection are livestock, or serfs, however libertarian their views or however independent and self-sufficient they fancy themselves. That’s why there is a pistol on that book at the top of the page.
As for the money soldiers receive – a husband who hands his paycheck over to his wife normally does not see her as a prostitute or a nanny. The same is true for soldiers. On the other hand Marines can usually be talked into putting their feet in the air for free.
The real question is whether one sees oneself as a citizen in a society sharing common responsibilities or as a consumer of government services. The market model odes not reflect some universla law applicable to all situations; it is just a very good and predictive heuristic for lots of situations. This doesn’t happen to be one of them.