The Centurion
Concertina, tanglefoot, trip flares,
pebble filled beer cans, and claymores.
81 mike mikes delivering daylight upon command,
used sparingly so as not to compromise our position,
like they didn’t know.
Sensing devices, listening posts, and starlight scopes
providing eyes that penetrate the darkness.
360 perimeter integrity, sectors of fire overlapping,
with the 60s standing ready
to saturate the likely avenues of approach.
M79s and LAWs for added firepower
and to cover any deadspace the terrain may impose.
Reserves in secondary positions
to respond to sapper penetration,
with the COM established
to coordinate and control the entire fiasco.
PRC25s, FDC, and azimuths,
with pre-registered targets
for quick and accurate H.E. and W.P.,
air bursts my favorite.
Phantoms and Puff
providing a downpour of nap and steel,
with yellow smoke to pinpoint the inferno.
Is it ever enough?
Strategy to match the brilliance of Caesar.
But this is not the Gallic wars.
Does Charlie appreciate such tactical genius?
How could he for we are the noble legions
and he the ignorant barbarian.
The board has been set and, like pawns,
we await his next maneuver.
Ghostly shadows, silently probing and sniping,
hoping to fund a vulnerable jugular.
Endless nights, limitless horror,
and senseless deaths.
High school dropout men of medicine,
clumsily restoring bowels to mutilated abdominal cavities,
while muffling the screams of unbearable pain and horror,
with injections of morphine and empty promises of survival.
Body bags, toe tags, and medevacs to graves registration.
It’s never enough.
Military escorts, flag draped coffins
and devastated loved ones,
comforted only by a seven gun salute
initiating the trumpeter’s final farewell.
Patriotism, nationalism, and Communism,
the angry gods of archaic religions
all demanding appeasement through human sacrifice.
. . . I’ve become an atheist.
Memories, daydreams, and nightmares
my constant companion
as I await the merciful dagger of Brutus.
copyright © Camillo Bica
