One Night At Argonne In The August Of '17 { Memorial Day Tribute }- Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

Open bags, rows 'n rows, twelve across, dark bloodstains,
Crusted wounds, deep 'n wide, th' stench of torched flesh,
Tho' th' story bleeds diferent now...almost a century ago-

Like menstruations strongest surge, young men flushed out,
Some with peach-fuzz overlips...eye's fixed 'n frightened;
Arrived together, they died together, all as one in arms.

Th' injured were treated by a lake, near Chatel Chéhéry;
Back home families grieved, for three day's and night's,
Th' wailing, could be heard through out th' town, so said.

Father Edwards, Army Chaplain, delivered Last Rites,
Th' day before th' Army shipped off th' bodies, in tin.
Dry ice melts fast in th' ides of a humid August.

They honored each soul with posthumous bronze medals,
An' were buried in a sea of raised sod and white crosses;
the synchronicity was surreal as the field was sacred.

World War I In th' August of '17 did take great toll,
So I was told, one August in '97 by his son, and I believe-
every word, as my grandfather would never lie about events-
that occurred one August mourning in, nineteen-seventeen.


FjR-MMXV