Yesterday may already have become
No more than a fragment of the past,
Consigned to that dim, distant time
now all but devoid of shape and color.
Yet, despite the decades in between,
We can call up in sharply etched detail
The events of half a century ago,
When the future was anything but sure.
As real now as then are the long,
Lonely watches under blistering sun,
Or in the frigid dark of night,
Constantly on nerve-tingling alert.
Somewhere out there, we knew,
Lurked the enemy, ready to launch
A torpedo that could send us
Within minutes to the bottom.
Even if the weeks in convoy
Ended with every ship intact,
Our goal might well have been
Some beach fraught with danger.
There the threat could come
From artillery drawn up on the beach,
Or from fighter-bombers overhead,
One as bent on killing as the other.
True, it happened long ago,
But time has failed to dim
The echo of the roaring guns,
The sight of ships engulfed in flame.
Although for some, all this
Is now no more than than history,
For us it is, and will forever be,
Reality, a living, bound-in-copper memory.
. -- Francis B. Kent
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