The Call To Duty: a Soldier's Poem

I went straight from High school into the service, I was feeling proud but extremely nervous. My mother cried with tears of joy, she said, “I will try to stop referring to you as my little boy.” I arrived at Basic Training with a bus load of candidates, we were greeted quite loudly at the main entry gates. The Drill Sergeants called us everything they could think of, we knew, at least from them, we would receive no love. We were too young to drink and barely able to vote, we were all different races, but we were in the same boat. We had eight weeks to learn how to work as a team, we started to believe that it was all a bad dream! We went to bed late but were up before dawn, we do more before nine is definitely right on! Basic Training was tough but we all got through it, things would get worst and we pretty much knew it. We would be on the front lines as Infantry Soldiers, there would be a lot of responsibility put on our shoulders. The first orders we received took us to the Middle East, our primary mission was to bring about peace. For the first time in our lives we were in a foreign land, the things we saw you could never understand. The precision bombings caused so much destruction, the whole place looks like it needs reconstruction. We are under attack on a regular basis, our so-called enemy is in more and more places. Perhaps we are acquiring more and more enemies, the hate for us here is like an infectious disease. We were instrumental in removing a terrible dictator, but the level of danger here has gotten even greater. Nobody wants to admit that we are in a civil war, many of us are now on our second or third tour. I have lost some of my comrades along the way, we all know the risks and that is all I can say. We will defend our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, we are a force to be reckoned with and we are not to be messed with! We will win this so-called war on terror, messing with the United States was their biggest error! A successful completion of our mission would be a thing of beauty, we are proud we answered “the call to duty.”