Classic Poem

I'm sick. They didn't stop coming,
And we wouldn't stop firing.

At the beginning, in January,
It looked like the Chongchon action for us again,
But we stopped them.
Brutally.

I passed on the beer ration again.
Drink? I don't even want to eat ...
Our counter-offensive started on January 21;
Happy Birthday, Rafe.

In February, it was just as bad. If possible: it was worse.
No one talks about the cold anymore, nor about the dead,
Theirs or ours, but mostly theirs.
Also, we never seem to run out of shells.

March, and Seoul's been retaken. We took our time.
I don't want to look at the Chinese dead.
There are hundreds of them out there. They died in the city,
They died in the fields and in the hillsides.
They died everywhere.

At one point,
It was artillery against artillery in the city.
It's early April.
I am not going to talk about this again, and so I will say it
This once:
We fired twelve thousand rounds of 105 mm. in twenty-four hours
In support of the Second Div.
I don't see how people can understand what
I am saying when I say
12,000 rounds of 105s in 24 hours.

It means this:

Seventeen of us were wounded. Minor wounds they were,
And all wounds bleed, but we kept firing.
There was no pain ... the blood caked and we kept up the fire.
We're animals,
But then, so are they.
At the aid station, Sonny Ruiz said it best:

" They came at the infantry down there like pigs in a chute,
And we just cut their necks off from up here. "

The officers are now ordering us to eat,
But we notice that their appetite hasn't improved either.

May, and I'm overdue for an R&R; I'm one of the medicals;
Personally, I think it's mental.