War - Sea Dead

[BLUEHAWK]

I, an unafraid airman, have been thinking this for a very long time....

We speak of the many acres on earth, here in America and elsewhere on this planet, which are dedicated graves... places of rest for the remains of our brothers and sisters, our warriors, our fighters and our kin.

What I have often thought about though is the countless and unmarked graves of all those buried at sea... on purpose and by the sinking of ships.... whose names may or may not be known... but over whose final resting places the ships, vessels, and boats pass silently every single day of our liveswhilst whilst we go about these lives unaware... where wreaths are thrown... where, where our kin lay so far beneath the water's face... from every combatant side in every war or skirmish since the beginning of time... be it BISMARK or ARIZONA or any other one, Pacific or Atlantic or Red or otherwise.. I weep. Submariner or Four-masted standard of the fleet, I weep.

I think about the sailors, very often... for there is no Wall beneath the water face, no cenotaph, no equestrian statue riding high afoot, no place to go for to mark a face and name where it lay... and I dream of the Hymn for those who do not return from the sea... and I weep... I weep for they whose place of rest cannot be known... I weep for those who lay in the cold soft sea, the shifting flowing sea, amidst the changing shoals and fauna salt or not... I weep and think of you whose names cannot be remembered, for whom there will be no monument above your bones where we might come to pray... and weep in our remembrance of your suffering, the manner of your death in service to a nation, in the cold and suffocating waters of our earth... I weep,

My Americans, my happy sailors, in your cap hats.... gone, gone, beneath the surface of the seas, so many seas, so many places.

I, remember you.