By: John Wayne
Why are you marching son? I’d really like to know. Because of Valley Forge, or perhaps the Alamo? Or one if by land, two if by sea? A trumpet’s call, the will to be free?
What of a man who stood straight and tall, who wept silent tears when he saw brave men fall? No matter, no difference, the blue or the gray, all were his brothers, how often he’d pray. And what of Antietam, that now peaceful stream, where the water blood red glittered and gleamed? Appomattox, Chickamauga, Vicksburg, Bull run. Cumberland, Gettysburg, then Washington. Why are you marching son?
In Flanders’s field, how proud were they, whose forms beneath the poppies lay. Men who saw Verdun and died at the Marne…Soissons, and those who tried the fearful foe at Chateau-Thierry. Who fought and bled, whose hearts grew weary, but in whose minds one thought kept churning. That the Torch of Liberty keep burning. Why are you marching son?
The planes swarmed in and the rising sun glowed fiercely on the evil done, for men whose blood runs through our veins. Men who died, and whose remains lie forever locked in waters deep. Now is it right that they should sleep while the warm sea laps at a twisted hull and see the Torch of Liberty grow dull? Anzio, Cassino…and the Po. St. Mere Eglise…, Leman. St. Lo, Gardelegen…Buchenwald, and on and on the roll is called, and why? Why are you marching Son?
Bugles shrilled in the frozen night. And at first dawn, the awful sight of seas of men, row after row, left to die on blood stained snow. Pusan, Pyongyang, Suwan, Pyongju, and blood red ran the swift Kalu?
In South Vietnam the big guns roared, and once again we fought a war. To honor a pledge our nation gave to help that little country save her people from the certainty that she’d be ruled by tyranny.
No matter where the big guns roar, our fighting men like those before, take the torch we all hold dear, and faced freedom’s enemies without fear. Our fathers died from sea to sea and blessed the Torch of Liberty. Why? Why are you marching son?
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