Classic Poem

So long kid
So long Irish
Last of the Old Guard but one to go
Your papa and mamma will get the pension
You never could spend.
Your pals are gone too
God knows where they've gone —
It was a good crowd while it lasted.
Six years of fever
Six years of bed life
Six years of reading the baseball scores
And hooking every man that passed to learn the winner's score

Six years of weak lungs and strong guts
Six years of Camp Kearny Hospital number sixty-four
In the long stable-like wards
Six years of paintless board-walls facing a prairie
Six years of Goodmorning-Kennedy-how-do-you-feel-today
Six years of temperature-taking never below a hundred
And a pulse a grasshopper would think fast
Six years of greasy food cooked by tired underpaid cooks
Six years of cold meals eaten mixed up with the smell of dying men
In the beds around you
Six years of this Kennedy
And then meningitis and an American Legion funeral.

A man gets rare decoration and a good job sometimes
For ten minutes madness in the face of the enemy
A German gun used to be worth the V.C. or Congressional medal

And Sergeant's stripes and half pay for life maybe
But you got six years in a barn of a hospital
And meningitis in the end.

You were a good laugher
The doctors liked you
And the nurses too
You never wanted much
You never wanted much from anyone.

The Republic gave you a hundred dollars a month
And it raised the salaries of its Senators that same year too
It was a good year for all
Soldiers have never been so well treated
The public and doctors and nurses and officials of the Veterans Bureau
Have never got over it
And they never let you forget it Kennedy.
The less it spends on a citizen — the lower the rank, the greater the need —
The more careful the Republic
The more consciously kind
The more stern father is the Republic.

They used to show you off
Exhibit you to visitors
Point with pride to your smile
Speak of your contented spirit
It helped them the doctors the others
Who lived on your decaying flesh
You with your life being eaten away
By worse than a rat
You smiled for them or at them
You kid you, you Irish terrier
Applauding the victories of a baseball field
Where men play for victory and ten thousand a year.

So long Irish
So long kid
The Old Guard was a good gang
You were the last but one to go.
I'll tell Babe Ruth about you if ever I see him
I don't know that he knows his home runs
Landed in your bed for six years
I'll tell Andy Gump about you if I ever meet him
He didn't know you listened in on his parties every day
Or he might have called
I'll tell the President if I ever see him
Just what you thought of him
I'll tell Congress
I'll tell the world
I'll tell them you told them all to go to hell
I'll tell them where you said you were going
And you dared them to follow you.