Though the
jungles are green,
From the ones that I've seen,
And the mud and the blood are quite red,
Wars appear grey, black and white,
No colours seem bright,
Rather sombre and lifeless instead.
In the back
of my mind,
When I press the rewind,
The tape plays slowly, frame after frame;
Perhaps death is the key,
To solve this mystery,
Why the colour remains just the same.
Two good
mates were to die,
At the start of 'The Dry',
'66 'twas approaching an end;
A blast from a shotgun,
Took the life of the first one,
Morale shaken when the death is a friend.
The other,
he loved horses,
On oval-shaped courses,
His smiling face, so hard to forget;
If Heaven has a racetrack,
I'll lay down my last 'zac',
That 'Tubby' will be there, I bet.
His section
stalking VC,
A squad of just three,
After a 'contact', were all on the run;
Leader, propping, quite calm,
Drew his holstered side-arm,
Turning, aiming and firing as one.
'Tubby's'
death 'twas for naught,
That day his young life was cut short,
Snuffed out by that one deadly shot;
Revenge waited not long,
On those three Viet Cong,
A grenade thrown had taken the lot.
Paul
('Tubby') Sullivan went home,
Yet sadly all on his own,
Not due to return until May;
Their Christmas was tattered,
His family was shattered,
When that bad news arrived the next day.
Another and
'Tubby' met up,
No doubt to bet on some Cup,
On his next tour, in March '69;
The young punter, a 'rookie',
And the older, his 'bookie',
Named Georgey Gilbert, who'd stepped on a mine.
Now I've
just gotta say,
From that very first day,
When my mate 'Nasho' Noack was killed,
Seemed Lady Luck passed us by,
Yet I'll never know why,
And our quota was far from yet filled.
Average age
of those men,
Really 'boys' way back then,
About 21 years was the mean;
From my own Company B,
The tally climbed tragically,
Up to be as high as fourteen.
One in the
mud on Long Son,
From a sniper that one,
And nine others from mines on Long Hai;
Another out near Long Tan,
And on that dry paddy sand,
Two out there on 'The Fence' were to die.
And yet
many more followed suit,
In that deadly pursuit,
Their ghosts haunt a tape in my dreams;
And I know it sounds queer,
These black and white images appear,
With faint tinges of reds and greens.
© Paul La Forest
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