Photo by Vince Alongi.

Readers, this week we’ve posted the poems that a U.S. Marine drafted during a deployment to Iraq and that a Vietnam veteran shared with us. Scroll down below to read them.

We have a special section on our website where we keep all of the reader poems that we’ve published so far, check it out here.

As always, we welcome your poetry submissions. All poems should be e-mailed to Corina.Notyce.ctr@tma.osd.mil, in the body of the e-mail, not as an attachment. For more information about our poetry initiative, click here.

From Marine to Marine

By: Nicholas Vandeventer

A cold rain begins to pour down my back
The blood of my foe's and brother's mingle and clean from my body.
Running through the war torn street carrying my dead brother looking frantically which way to go I hear a cry, then I feel numb,
The rain washes more blood from my body but now it's mine.
Our enemies are coming to see us, my brother and I,
We tried not to die, oh if only our mothers wouldn't cry.
"For Honor, Courage, and Commitment!" I cried.
If only we didn't have to die.
We served for love of nation, corps, and pride.
If only we didn't have to die.
A shot!
A shot from who?
"United States Marine!"
Joy! We're saved my brother and I,
Our other brothers have come so we don't have to die.
I wake, why? Back at base am I,
Look I do for my brother who came so I wouldn't die.
"Nurse, nurse I cried. Where is my brother who wouldn't let me die?"
Not a word, she only cried.
There that day I died.
In the streets where my brother and I bled side by side.
Why? Why did they have to die?
Then in my mind all I hear is, Semper Fi.

In The Death of Combat

By: Robert “Cody” Griffith, Vietnam Veteran

The author was wounded August 17, 1967. Quang Tri Providence of Vietnam - Operation Beacon Gate with B. Co - 1st.Blt - 3rd Mar - 3rdMarDiv

During Vietnam, the author sustained head injures from a grenade blast and was shot twice in a fire fight. He was pronounced clinically dead for about three minutes (his heart stopped). One evening in 1996, he awoke from sleep and saw himself going through the transition to death that he had experienced.

He writes: “These are the words that came to me at that time and… I felt that these same words must have come to many who have had the same near death or death experience as I had that early morning on 17 Aug. '67.”

In the death of combat the only light to be seen is that of the glistening moon, and the silences of all life in the night are almost deafening.

As the chill of ones soul cools the hot night, the feel of hell's eternity covers one with the fear of blackness and loneliness, and the cries and screams make no sound to those in the night of deaths life.

As life ends the death, the touch of an unknown to carry back, and awake to life in a different light, but not to be forgotten.

Copyright: 21 - April - 1996