Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Over

by Aaron Johnson

Wish upon your star to behold your light.
Behold your joy again renewed.
Have and hold joy in living freely gifted you always and forever. Your life rang true as sunshine earth bound scattering to light the way before you.

To this soldier of heart, might, mind and strength. Live as ready proclamation carried by every standard bearer as found readily inscribed on the banners of your kind. Live to make right any discounting the names of those who served and who are gone. Live to ring true again as those toeing these stolid lines flowing red from the Senate’s ink wells as the wings of Phobos and Deimos encircling Mars.

Live to hold the record straight on their service. Live to speak their name aloud. Live for those missing among us. Live to speak on this service noble among the living and the sometimes dying. Live to speak these names now on record here at home for those returning. Live for those alive.

Speak for those who toed this imagined line somewhere, chalked on distant shores far from those they loved. Speak as a ping homeward bound regards those who bled, those who died and those continuing on in service. Live to speak their names aloud as a roll call to this kind still found numbered among the living and the brave. Live.

Aaron Johnson was a 91B airborne medic in the USAR and UTNG. He later joined the full time Navy during the Persian Gulf War. He was worried he’d miss out on the action of OIF/OEF, and became a contractor (2008 – 2010), flying in and out of both conflicts the equivalent of 6 times around the globe. He recently created the X-Alta Foundation to assist veterans.

Where

by John Mansfield

Where did he go? He’s someone you know.
You saw him on TV, the Walter Cronkite show.

You know who I mean, there’s a rifle in his hand, the man dressed in green, in a far away land.

He stands in the mud, a man still so bold, covered with blood with eyes o’ so old.

He went back to school wanted something to show, though cursed and called fool, he’d learned, don’t you know.

He’s the lawyer, the doctor, the baker, the cook. He’s unemployed, a farmer, he’s writing a book.

He’s married; he’s single, divorced, widowed or alone. He holds on to his pride, that’s what helped bring him home.

Where did he go? He’s someone you know.
You saw him on TV, the Walter Cronkite show.

He works every day, has a family, a place. He’s part of our world yet needs his own space.

For sometimes he stands all alone feeling down. Goes off by himself, he smiles then he frowns.

Remembers those days when he served us with pride, thinks of friends far away, those who fought by his side.

Yes he served us with pride though desperate with fear, tears flood to his eyes for buddies not here.

Where did he go? He’s someone you know.
You saw him on TV, the Walter Cronkite show

He is all but forgotten by all but a few. He has no regrets for what he chose to do.

He’s an old soldier now, who once long ago lived up to his vows, while others said no.

Where did he go?
Why, nowhere, you see.  He is inside of you, he’s inside of me.

John L. Mansfield served as a Mortar & Rifle Platoon Leader with 4-31 Infantry, the 196th BDE in Vietnam. He stayed in the Army Guard & Army Reserve and retired with over 30 years of service. He has published two articles on leadership: “Why Not It Is Your Report Card” & “Setting Headspace & Timing in Junior Leaders”, both in National Guard magazine. A book about his Vietnam experiences titled Twenty Days in May, Vietnam 1968 was published in 2008. He and his wife Sandy, who live in Iowa, celebrated 45 years of marriage in May and stay busy with their 5 grandchildren.

Wake

by Edison Jennings

1983, Mediterranean/North Africa Deployment

Gibraltar looked like a leftover piece of a tectonic puzzle, divinely abandoned
when continents parted and oceans decanted on African Eden.

The fat sun went down, a sickle moon rose, and Venus sat pretty on the thin lunar cusp
while the USS Eisenhower headed for home, six sailors and airmen lost in the wake.

We tried to remember where we were going and where we had gone,
what circles sailed and what vectors flown, but the wind spoke in tongues

and none of us heard the howling chorus of Barbary apes that sang our epode:
Africa burning, bodies unburied, the bereaved in the ruins biding their time.

Edison Jennings enlisted in the Navy in 1981 and separated with an honorable discharge as an AW1 in 1994. Afterwards, he went to graduate school and now serves on the faculty of Virginia Intermont College. His poem “Wake” is a slightly fictional remembrance of a 1983 Mediterranean cruise aboard USS EISENHOWER (CVN 69). His poetry has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. His chapbook Reckoning was published by Jacar Press in November, 2013 (http://www.jacarpress.com/books/).