The Involunteers (a poem)

By Russ Vaughn

One thing to me rings loud and clear

Through mainstream media sources:

Libs don't understand, Volunteer,

When it comes to our fighting forces.

Their memories hark to former days,

Dubious deferments due to classes,

Craven cowering in cynical ways,

Just to cover their cowardly asses.

Pony-tailed pundits of treason foregoing,

Now scoff and condemn with derision,

Volunteer warriors, warned and knowing,

Who've made a fateful decision,

Foregoing the comforts liberals love,

That very succor to preserve,

A concept Libs are ignorant of:

To reap benefits, one should serve.

Ever fearful, Libs cower in classrooms,

Proclaiming the due of the masses;

On graves of the brave, toxic mushrooms,

Still cravenly covering their asses.

Preaching, protesting, showing their ire,

Cat-box covering all their worst fears,

Cowardly curs afraid of war's fire,

They're our nation's Involunteers.

I know a truth from mankind's past,

A truth that sure prevails;

Those who fight are those will last,

Throughout all man's travails.

But those making phony excuses,

As false and fearful disguise,

Will feel history's worst abuses,

Enslaved by their cowardly lies.

The author served six years in the United States Army as a volunteer at a time when so many were being unwillingly conscripted into the Vietnam conflict. Many of them, untold thousands of them served bravely, but this old paratrooper noncom will tell you this straight certain: in all-hell's-breaking-loose combat, I preferred volunteers every time. When it was all hitting the fan, I had an inherent inability to place my full trust, and perhaps my life, in the hands of citizens who had been compelled by force of law to be serving beside me. I am now frequently on military installations all over the country and will bet any "Old Army" types that our current volunteer forces are vastly superior in training, intelligence, spirit and physical fitness to any forces America has ever fielded. They are Volunteers.

Russ Vaughn

2d Bn, 327^th Parachute Infantry Regiment

101^st Airborne Division

Vietnam 65-66