Freedom is not Free

Posted May 26, 2014

Please join me and the Eremos community as we remember the men and women who have died in service to America and their dream of freedom. We remember also all the countries now at war and the pain people are suffering today.

Freedom is not Free

By Kelly Strong
I watched the flag pass by one day
It fluttered in the breeze
A young Marine saluted it
And then he stood 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 died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No Freedom isn’t free.

I heard the sounds 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
That 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 the graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington
No freedom isn’t free!