[center][b][u]Johnny Came Home One Day[/u][/b]

Johnny came home from school one day
Thoughts imprinted ever to remain
Stories of the previous brave do stay
With promises of glory to claim

Age old expressions revived
Blood and iron and duty
Packed up in a travel bag
No raffle hat, he would go, by choice

Johnny left home one day,
Poured into the crucible
Where elder smiths mold him
To their iron design

Clothed in honor and sacrifice
Selflessly armed with heroic bullets
Individual broken down to one sculpted gear
In the churning bravery engine

Johnny went to the jungle one day
Equipped belief of dutiful will
Draped in red and blue stripes
Painted with dreamed ideals

First steps down the darkened
Jungle corridors, halls of vine
Leaf green life casting shadows of,
The unseen

Camaraderie charm keeps the ease
Til' one man stepped out of line, and
The mine says "One less brother in arms."
With blood trickling from fiery tongue

Dark nights lit with bursting terror
Never sleep with death on the doormat
Knock, knock, knocking
With double tapped fists

Johnny felt the dark that day
Creeping fingers of the reaper
Carved down his spine
Etching the echoes of inevitable loss

Heat scars with steamed sweat
Mud and rain drowns the face of hope
But the boy closes his eyes and tries to remember
"With a will of iron, you will be great."

Old voices silenced
Blood and bodies form
Trails from My Khe to Saigon, to
Darkness that swallows whole

Johnny stared into the jungle deep
Infinite black unafraid of iron shells
He walked in and walked out alive, but never came back;
Johnny came home one day.[/center]