Yes, onward Christian soldiers. Your faith informs you that your God has made you so free to choose that others may choose to deny, even defile Him, yet you march to that 'different drummer' down the much narrower path.
Donning your uniform as an American soldier, you pledge to defend your country “…against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” in the name of freedoms broad enough to protect those who would protest your duties, scorn you, stage demonstrations at your funerals, and spit upon the very colors waiting to drape your casket.
Thirty dozen days you are mindfully back-burnered, then comes your birthday, the day you died, the day your mutilated remains were lain to rest in a field much prettier and more peaceful than the infested jungle swamp in which your body was found nailed to a tree, disemboweled, your eyes gouged by a rusty blade, your clothing shorn, a sight your brothers-in-arms can never erase and are wont to find comfort of escapes both conscious and subconscious. You’re missed at Christmas, maybe an anniversary.
The remainders of those few days beyond the thirty dozen, Veterans and Memorial Days, baby flags are aflutter against your headstone and those of your brothers as “Taps” is mournfully blown while some of us pause in reverberations of respectful and tearful silences, silences to wonder why it was you and not us, sensing our remaining bond with you across life’s threshold, the true colors of our flags, internal, knowing we will serve with you again before the supreme commander.
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