combat writing badge C O M B A T
the Literary Expression of Battlefield Touchstones
ISSN 1542-1546 Volume 05 Number 03 Summer ©Jul 2007



Panzer Leader



      The panzer leader pale blond more old than young
      At twenty-one a four year veteran
      Imagines himself the last defense against barbarism
      His face is a map of blood-stained terrain
      Contours of unnamed ridges the contours
      Translate into numbers numbers noting elevation
      Numbers counting deaths and wounds the tank begins to move
      Frozen mud cracks beneath the steel tracks
      Patches of brown in a world all white and black
      Through dark hours dawn has seemed to wait and now
      Thin light barely cuts smoke rancid fog
      The gods speak with voices loud as guns
      Announcing deaths our history does not regret
      Yet in a bleak bomb ravished town
      A woman puts her sewing down and cries
      Desolate without knowing just exactly why
      While clean snow builds her love a burial mound



by Jess C. Henderson
... who is educated in creative writing, a former newspaper and trade journal editor, now writing freelance poems and essays; as an amateur historian, he writes the Posted Muster column in this literary magazine.




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C O M B A T, the Literary Expression of Battlefield Touchstones