Thank You!

NO, FREEDOM ISN'T FREE
(Author & photographer unknown)
I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform;
so young, so tall, so proud.
With hair cut square and eyes alert,
he'd stand out in any crowd.


I thought how many men like him
had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil;
how many mother's tears?

I thought about a graveyard at the bottom of the sea.
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn't free.


I heard the sound of Taps one night,
when everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.

I wondered just how many times
that Taps had meant 'Amen.'
When a flag had draped a coffin
of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children,
of the mothers and the wives,
of fathers, sons and husbands
with interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea.
Of unmarked graves in Arlington .
No, freedom isn't free.

Enjoy Your Freedom
and
God Bless Our Troops.

~oOo~

A very special thanks to my dear husband Rudy for his service in the Navy, my uncles Hubert, Arnold, Curtis and Estes (whom I never met because he gave his life on Tuesday, July 25, 1944. Buried during WWII in Normandy American Cemetery; Colleville-sur-Mer, France).