Freedom Is Not Free


   

FREEDOM IS NOT FREE

 I watched the flag pass by one day,
 It fluttered in the breeze;
 A young Marine saluted it, 
 Stopped to stand 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 mothers' tears,
 How many Pilots' planes shot down,
 How many foxholes were soldiers' graves.
 No, Freedom is not 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,
 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!!
 
 God  Bless  America

 Copyright 1981  by Kelly Strong
 [email protected]



Charlotte Curlee Ramsey
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cramsey/index.html

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