God Save Us From the Great Men

By Tom King

They lay in the muck on Flanders field.

Lord Kitchener had said,

“Your country needs you!”

To stand and face the machine guns

They charged the guns at Breed’s Hill

General Gage had said the rebels would run

When faced with “real” troops.

They were mere farmers and woodsmen after all.

They charged up the Valley of Death

The Light Brigade, all 600 horse

Lord Cardigan at their head,

Because someone gave the wrong order.

They slept in their camps at San Jacinto

For Presidente’ Antonio de Padua María Severino

López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, the Napoleon of the West

Said the Texans were cowards.

They crossed that horrific field at Gettysburg

Because General Robert E. Lee

Told them they could not lose.

And they believed.

They sailed boldly up the English Channel

King Philip called them  

The greatest armada in history.

Even God could not defeat them.

They rode in columns down upon the British lines

Napoleon told them they were invincible.

That they would drive Wellington from the field

Before the Prussians came.

They lay in pitiful charred heaps along the streets

And in the parks and battered buildings at Hiroshima

The Emperor had said they were a Divine Wind

That would sweep the barbarians before them.

They picked among the ruins at Dresden

Looking for keepsakes and lost children

Der Fuehrer had said the Reich

Would last a thousand years.

They slogged through the jungles at Dak-To

The orders came from the Oval Office

Johnson said the dominoes would fall

If they did not stand and fight.

They staggered toward their enemies

And surrendered to helicopters

Saddam had told them it would be

The Mother of All Battles

We fling ourselves upon battlements

And die by thousands in the dirt

At the word of the Earth’s Great Men

May God deliver us from them.




(c) April 3, 2013, Carriage House, Puyallup, WA