It Wasn’t My War
a poem by
James Strauss
It wasn’t my war,
Not that stuff going on,
Not where it is or where it was.
It’s not my war,
Not now and over there,
For me it was right here,
Even though then I was there.
It’s not my war,
Not now and not anymore,
Because I came home,
And I don’t have to go anymore.
It’s not my war,
I don’t cry or dream about it,
I don’t complain or carry on,
Because I came home,
And I don’t have to go anymore.
It’s not my war,
But the voices won’t go away,
Like lyrics of an old score,
Because deep down I know,
They’re all my wars,
Alone,
Unafraid,
In hope,
I don’t have to go anymore.
Narrated Version
Share your Sentiments
I like the full-circle journey of the poem, sentiments shared by many veterans. I also like that the written layout matches the meter of the your narration.
Thank you for sharing with us.
Thanks a lot Steve.
Semper fi,
Jim
Dear James, I never served “in country”, but I served in the 5th. Army Honor Guard Ft. Sheridan, Illinois in ’69. My High School classmate, Warnell Eugene Aten was a Corpsman K.I.A.Feb. 19, 1969. I sent this poem to General Powell while he was Chairman of the Joint chiefs and it was on the monitor for 7 minutes when William Jefferson Davis Clinton gave his first State of the Union Speech and said the speech on the monitor wasn’t the one he intended to give. (IT WAS PAYBACK FOR “BLACK-HAWK DOWN”)!! “ON MY JOURNEY TO BATTLE GRIM REAPER” by CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER STEPHEN – Closer than a brother could be your words meant allot to me. As I watched them bury my loved ones deeper I knew that somehow GOD was my keeper. Grim Reaper cheered as I turned to face the one I feared I swore an OATH, a SACRED VOW to GOD ALMIGHTY, it’s HIS fight N.O.W. He’ll be here soon there’s not a doubt we’ve PISSED HIM OFF and he HE has the clout to take over the world and throw the bad ones out! JUDGEMENT DAY is my COMMISSION and I have successfully completed my MISSION.
Dear James,
Two typos:Warnell Eugene Aten
I knew that somehow GOD was my Keeper
( sometimes too emotional to see clearly)
Typos fixed and thanks for you input
Typos fixed and thank you, Stephen
Thanks for your comment and sharing your experience, Stephen
I read it and I felt it. Somethings you never forget. Thank you for the poem
Thank you Darnell. That’s poetry. When the poem succeeds you feel it. Thanks for letting me
know that the poem was a ‘success,’ at least from your viewpoint. That means quite a bit to
us people working out here way back deep behind the stage curtains. The Phantom of the Opera without
the neat mask, sort of thing…
Semper fi,
Jim
I really enjoy reading the sections from your book that are shared from time to time. It brings back a lot of good and bad memories from when I was in Nam. Oct 1967 to Oct 1968. In October it will be 50 years since I went to Vietnam and it seems like just yesterday to me. Thank you for writing your book. The Poem is real nice too.
Thanks Tom. I know where the story comes from but the poetry just seems to appear form time to time.
Thanks for the nice comment on that and the story too.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you! Kind words, B Trp 2-1 Cav ’69
My pleasure Donald, and thanks for coming on here and writing that.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thank you for your insights and the sharing of your poem and story. I served during this time but fortunately never left the states to face the conflict that you endured. I never faced combat and the enemy but lost a part of myself watching my innocence slowly stripped from me by a government willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for political expediance. Thank you sir for the strength to bare your soul.
Rick. Thank you for the depth of feeling in your comment. The government did not fail you, as I have written on here before. You just came to see things differently. Groups of people struggle against the powers set up to threaten survival. In fight to stay alive they do things that are not honorable or proudful, although those things are not admitted, because such admissions would play right back into damaging survival potentials. I am glad you weren’t there. Because you are here to feel bad in print. If you had gone with me then I’d be writing and you would not, or even reading. Pick yourself up and dust yourself up and laugh at the government by understanding that it is a whole lot more flawed than you, and it has to be by its nature. Without it we could never act together to have and advance civilization. We need it. But we also badly need you to not like it and to question and oppose it all the time. Laugh while you are doing that.
Semper fi,
Jim
It’s funny that you would put out this great poem, because many times in your writing I have thought about Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.” Can hardly wait for the next chapter.
Thank you Steve. That’s quite a compliment. I don’t consider myself a poet although I do sit down upon occasion
and write poetry. Poetry was not something real men, or boys, did when I was growing up. That old prejudice lingers
inside me. Thanks for the recognition and the depth of your reading. I like to think my writing is worth it but then it
matters not what I think about that.
Semper fi,
Jim
My unit 10th Cavalry, 4th Inf. Div. went in 1964 to train
ARVN. A whole company of fngs A recon outfit
I visited with a first louie 2 yrs later. We lostbsome of these men before our V.A. was told they were Nam vets. Poor kids never had a chance to take a dump in the Nam before they won the CMH. Casket Metal Handled.
Thanks for sharing that Frank. So many stories from back there.
I never heard the CMH thing but it’s something else.
Thank you for commenting here.
Semper fi,
Jim
Yes, it was NOT MY war, but it STILL IS my war. The effects of the Agent Orange -the disease- has clinically killed me twice. My sons carry the same disease. My dead grandchild as well. But, you see it WAS and IS MY war? I am reminded of the other poet
poet, John Donne:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
I Have no regrets, except for those who did not accept us upon our return. I grieve for them. Xin Loi
Well, to be so compared is high praise indeed. Thank you Someone.
I have always loved that poem but never would have compared it to my own
work. I just put together words to tell a story or explain a state of mind.
Poetry permits more dextrous use of words, teaches sparse presentation
and sometimes makes me smile thinking about how I might have gotten it just right.
Expository writing in novels is different in that my mind and fingers just fly along following the line
of a story already formed. Screenwriting and dialogue in stories is more like poetry.
Even the novels are all laced with fiction, however, no matter how the may be explained by me
as having happened to me. They are laced with ‘filler’ I get from the background radiation of my
thinking. What really happened moment to moment, conversation to conversation?
Thanks for the high compliment and support.
Semper fi,
Jim
Hey friend and fellow soldier of mine wrote a poem at LZ Baldy late 1967 when I was there with him and the first cavalry 11th aviation group and we were known as falcon GCA , we also had a air traffic control tower at the site . The poem depicts how most of us GIs felt no matter where we were,when we were,who we were.
Here goes: Home. by Lynn. Home is where I want to be,home is where a man is free,home is the promised land,I just want to go home, I just want to go home!
Thank you Thomas. Everything is welcome on this site with comments from people writing about the war
and the effects at the top of the list, of course. Thank you for the comment and the poem!
Semper fi,
Jim
I’m happy to have discovered your writing James. The poem is very moving. Like 30 Days it feels like I could’ve written it myself. If only I had half your writing talent. I’m happy you decided to tell your story. God Bless
Thank you Jack, I do not consider myself a poet, but sometimes thoughts translate to a scheme of words easily.
posting a couple more over weekend
I’ve rarely had those first thirty days come back to me like this.
Seems as though they were pretty much the same for a lot of us. I was with 2/5 out of combat base Baldy in the Que son mountains.
Semper Fi james
The field work in Vietnam, some of which was combat and much of which was
moving around waiting to be engaged, has a similar foundation. It was a jungle guerrilla
war and the cultures were foreign, languages relative unknown and the tools of helicopter deployment
and air power untested and basically unknown. Command was at a distance, sometimes all the way to the White House for
field decisions. The distance, transition, and Project 100,100 created an absolute mess in the field for so many
men being dropped in. And nobody was ready for that, particularly not the men being dropped in.
Thanks for reflecting on my reaching a chord inside you. Means a lot.
Semper fi,
Jim
What a great read thank you for sharing
Thanks for the compliment Rick. I am working away to get to the 30th day but it will
be awhile. The next segment I will finish today, which is the Tenth Night Second Part.
Thanks again for reading and commenting here…
Semper fi,
Jim
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Henry V, William Shakespeare
H.Lee. It could not be said better for depth of emotion and intent.
The special nature of those of us ‘accursed’ but not is legend in many times gone
by and every time has its following time of peace which engender such emotion ripped straight from
the chest kind of literature. Thank you for that piece, and for being here…
Semper fi,
Jim
WWl and WWll we entered a good cause to win, and did. After that it was politically inspired conflicts with likely political results. No body’s war as it turns out. The Isis thing may be another good cause.
The wars earlier on were those conflicts unavoidably headed toward cultural,
social and even physical survival.
The wars since has not been so politically motivated as they have been
driven by a military industrial complex that must have an enemy to keep growing ever larger with more expensive tools.
The ‘Forever War’ from the book 1984 comes to mind when we might be discussing the recent spat of terrorism wars.
Iraq, Afghanistan, the Taliban, Al Qaida, ISIS, and what next.
The way it is these days.
Thanks for your intelligent comment and for the reading.
Semper fi,
Jim
I’ve read ten days,thru your eyes. Im lacking the “esprit de corps”that your suppose to be Marine.
Maybe you should someday if still Alive,interview your Gunny.
There were grunts that took the job,after all that’s why we trained everyday.
Some of US were there in 65 then back in 68 when we were still in the Hunting mode, 69 and up were the “Passification years,
and it seems talking to some that was when so called shitbirds were infiltrating the Corp.
I was in all volunteer Airborne, 11bravos. Someday we should have a conversation.
Thank you sergeant, it is good to always consider what I write in comments along the way.
Some of the reason I do comment back so religiously. I fought a small focused war inside a small part of
the country with a very small unit of Marines. I did not fight the Vietnam war in general or anywhere but in my small
area of operations. So I can’t and should not be used as an example of what happened to everyone. I don’t know what happened to
everyone. I just know that most won’t talk about it and presume it’s because of having had experiences like my own. I may be wrong,
but I don’t think so.
Thank you for bringing up the subject and yes, I would much enjoy that conversation.
Semper fi,
Jim
They’re all our wars every night. S/F
Yes, Tom, we fight them nightly or struggle to recover from the fighting of them.
All of us.
Semper fi,
Jim
Thanks for commenting and reading the poem, Tom
I appreciated the energy and sentiment expressed here, James