Purple heart

My cousin Nancy displays in her home a framed, hand-tinted photograph of a handsome young man, her brother, James Timmerberg, who was killed in Korea in April, 1951. Jimmy was 21 years old. Next to the frame is a medal, the Purple Heart he was awarded posthumously.

As we prepare to observe Memorial Day, I would like to share with you a poem Nancy’s 16-year-old grandson, Colin Scott, wrote for a high school English assignment.

  

The purple heart

I duck and dodge as bullets fly

And watch men clutch their wounds and die.

In midst of guns, and bombs, and knives

Fifty men fight for their lives.

Shots echo through the mountain pass

The enemy has come at last.

Men run for cover, grab their guns.

A man screams: “Die Americans.”

This angers me. I turn to shoot,

A frag grenade rolls by my boots.

I run to safety, flee the boom,

I feel my impending doom.

My men are dying, dead or gone.

This mission’s going very wrong.

Then suddenly I wince and cry,

I fall back and stare at the sky.

Now I succumb to pain and gore,

And die in the forgotten war.

I then feel comfort, angels sing,

As happy death heals burning sting.

Then we travel, past the fray

All the way to present day.

In a tall house very far away,

Away from where the men were slain.

Across the house, down the hall

A boy takes something off the wall.

My great-nephew jumps with a start

And stares into my purple heart.