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Seventy Years - A Million Tears

by  dharker

Posted: Friday, June 6, 2014
Word Count: 193
Summary: For the men, and women who gave their lives - we will remember them




Ordinary men in troubled times
On decks we stand and cry,
Fearful, afraid, uncertain
yet all prepared to die

Landing craft pitch and heave
bump and ride the tide
Ramps grind then fall;
the gates of hell flung wide

Young soldiers all, we surge and run
through swarms of coppered lead,
bullets fizz and fly, they pass
to summon forth the dead

heavy slap, then comrades fall
they die - their luck all run
shells hammer, thumping shock
on chest and gut they drum

Push forward now and upwards
beyond that hellish maw
the sights we see, the horrors get
upon that Stygian shore

On tortured lung we reach the ridge 
dropping all our foes then run 
Was it Death that gladly scythed the beach
Or just a mothers son

Seventy years of washing
Those waves on foreign shore
Will not wipe away nor diminish
That courageous battle corps
 
Now serried ranks of gravestones
Stand tall and fair and proud
Spilled the blood of heroes
They faced theirs fear unbowed.

Stand tall my fellow freemen
And shed ye not a tear
These men, these boys died fighting
So we would have no fear…