Freedom Is Not Free

I watched the flag pass by one day, it fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it, and then he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform, so young, so tall, so proud
With hair cut square and eyes alert, he'd stand out in any crowd.

I thought how many like him had fallen through the years.
How many died in foreign lands? How many mothers' tears?

How many pilots' planes shot down? Or ships were sunk at sea?
The foxholes that were soldiers' graves? No Freedom is not free.

I heard the sound of taps one night, when everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play and felt a sudden chill.

I wondered just how many times that taps had meant "Amen"
When a flag had draped a coffin of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children, of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons, and husbands, with interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard at the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.

No, Freedom is not free!

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