(Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, Veterans’ Day)

You said it never left you:

5 things you could see—
• The letter summoning you
• The doctor’s large finger in the cold exam room
• The big yellow bus that was not taking you to school
• Your first barracks
• The freshly shaved heads of your fellow soldiers

4 things you could hear—
• Ten-hut!
• All right, maggots—drop and give me 20.
• the rat-a-tat of assault rifles
• the chatter of your heart

3 things you could feel—
• The cold submachine gun in your sweaty hands
• The clammy neck of a downed soldier; praying for a pulse
• Your aching, blistered, rotting feet

2 things you could smell—
• Blood, sometimes your own
• Death, not your own—yet

1 thing you could taste—
• Coming home, never the same, but home,
Hallelujah. You lucky bastard.

•••

In memory of my father, Roger E. Haag, infantryman in the Korean War, with gratitude.