HEROES ALL

They came home proud and honored,
The men who went to war.
To flag and banner, fife and drum
And high school bugle corp.

Followed close behind
By their sea of khaki brown.
The pride of all their families,
The finest men in town.

And every year about this time
They'll fill the streets again.
Then picnics in the park
And fireworks in the end.

But their numbers slowly dwindle
As time marched slowly on.
A few less men in khaki brown,
Less picnics on the lawn.

And though their sons had been away
To fight on foreign land,
They came back home as soldiers shunned.
They never heard the band.

Then one parade not long ago
In the middle of it all
Was a younger man in olive green
Marching proud and tall.

A solitary figure
From an unforgiving war
Marching with the older ones,
A soldier shunned no more.

Author’s Note: To all my friends: Through 1995, all the marchers on Memorial Day were Mostly WW 2 veterans with a handful of Korean War vets. I decided that in 1995 things were going to change. So 6 weeks before Memorial Day I ran a notice in the local weekly newspaper for a call to arms inviting Springfield Vietnam veterans to stand up and be counted and to march with me.

During the next 4 weeks I received one phone call and that was a wrong number. At that point I was going to scrap the idea altogether. In the end I decided to march alone. I was glad I did. I wrote this poem a few weeks later and hereby dedicate it to my fellow veterans.

Alan L. Winters
May 10, 2006