Norman Sixt
Norman Sixt (CAS’67) of Westfield, Mass., writes that after graduating from BU, he went on active duty with the US Navy as a medical corpsman. After training and working at the US Naval Hospital, he was attached, in 1968, to a Marine Infantry Company in Vietnam as a field medic. “After my military service, I worked in the scientific and medical environment. My interest outside my work has always been 20th-century history associated with military conflicts. I feel very strongly about the futility of war and how it has manifested itself yet again with this war in the Ukraine. Over the course of time I have put together a poem which illustrates my thoughts and passion concerning this.” Read the poem here, and email Norman at ngsixt@gmail.com.
SPIRIT OF THE FALLEN
Ravaged soldier take my hand and come away with me.
Leave your arms upon the earth and you will see
That the enemy are there only because others tell them to be.
They too have their families who weep when they kiss their last goodbye,
To take up all those weapons to fight for what and why?
Those centuries of hatred, those stories often told
Of death and rape and war done to both young and old.
It is so very hard to imagine in the cool light of day
How men could kill each other in so many horrible and vile ways.
They then are the lucky who do indeed survive
When wounded in body and mind but still alive.
Those scars are set deep and do eternally thrive.
God, we often say, just how much we have evolved.
We do have all those comforts and yet we cannot solve
The way to talk to each other, forgive, forget, and move on
To become a family of people beyond earth and every dawn.
Regardless of their faith and mans’ wars in God’s name
What hypocrisy and blasphemy for it is not the same.
Leaders listen well today for it is not you who go and die.
We must listen to God’s words from all faiths live together, love, and try. ©
Norman Sixt, 2022.