Road of Retreat

The road of retreat
Tis one of bitter defeat
Neither crushed nor dead yet lost
Tis non-refundable cost
Some battles you can’t win
No matter how much you throw in
Eventually comes the cave-in
As supplies start failing.
Sometimes you find a big fat wall
And it won’t yield nor fall
You pound bloodied fists on stone
Drown in tears of thine own.
Food and munitions dwindle and fail
You try to breach to no avail
All that’s left is to turn tail
All options gone – all hands bail
Weighed down by crushing defeat
You weep as stones break your feet.
Regret, anger, depression, all in one
What’s done is done.
One day, the bitter will be sweet
Till then we in mourning weep.

Inertia

The tendancy to be unchanged
Constanct resistance to change
In my prison cell bound with chains

Maybe stagnant, maybe moving straight
Inertia, will not sway nor deviate
No matter how long we wait

The constancy – both blessing and curse
If not careful, we wake in a hearse
For want of making the right turn

Naturally inclined to find the comfort zone
We our very kryptonite do own
Every time we to our natural instinct go

Natural tendancies can be suicidal
When the world is falling all around you
And thou didn’t stop to think what to do

The constancy of movements – the enemy’s joy
Taking careful notes so as to employ
The swiftest hidden way to thee destroy

Inertia – when the pace picks up
We fail to respond to the beating drum
Tis a matter of time till we’re dumped

Inertia – the inability to change
Despite the enemies that stand in our way
The certain doom if we refuse to turn away

8/14

No Negotiation

Never turn back. Never back down.
Onward we march. Never turn around.

No detours, promises, or laws.

Every man for himself. All out war.

Gone down a one-way road, no return.

Only way to win is to burn and get burnt.

The only way to win is to pay whatever cost.

In every hardship, whatever lose.

All day, all night – no negotiation

To the bold- put your hands in.

Imagine complete victory, accept nothing less.

Onto battle: Compromise makes a suicidal mess.

No deal-no negotiation with the enemy – come and shoot me.

photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod

Eagle’s Fifth

Under a full moon, in the misty border of Germania
Stood a soldier, with his armour, while it was snowing.
As the moon’s light radiated from her,
He looked longingly at the embers glowing.

As the wind chilled his skin, he shivered.
Goosebumps prickled, rattled the sword in his sheath.
He could feel his eyes closing fast
Weary, untried soldier of the eagle’s Eighth.

His forefathers had fought and bled on this soil
This ground upon which he now stood was built with blood.
The peace that rested upon the land was like a bubble.
All it takes is a touch and it will bust.

His cheeks’ ruddy glow slowly turned to blue,
His pulse began to drop, his eyelids grew weak.
Them feet were growing tired, his arms sore.
His mind went leaping into wonderland, as it sought relief.

Soldier of the Eighth – what could possibly go wrong?
Best quality, latest gear – an unparallelled world power.
Fifteen years of peace, however, was almost over.
Right at that moment came an unseen menace – closer by the hour.

He opened his eyes. Must have dozed off. The fire had burnt out.
The stars above stared down at him, peaking through gathering clouds.
The great eagle and it’s power had fallen asleep.
The grip of death was taking hold o’er the villages and towns.

Their houses built and furnished, the well-off celebrated.
The poor and homeless lay in the streets forgotten.
Years of hard-work was now replaced with party and gaiety,
And the usurpers gloated o’er the ill-gained goods they’d gotten.

Swords now were hung above the fire, memories of old.
The training grounds were used for fun now. No more tears and pain.
Never had there been better days, or so it seemed.
For everything comes with a cost – and there’s a lot of it unpaid.

Something inside his head is telling him to stay awake.
But the cold is so harsh, and his stomach is too full.
He leans against the stone parapet, staring into the night.
It was so dark and lonely out there deep in the woods.

Night after night, he had stood here, waiting to sound the alarm.
Never had it come and now he was just a part of the scenery.
His companion already asleep on duty – alone in the watchtower
The most boring job on his itinerary.

He signed up to fight, but stand watch was all he really ever did.
Starting to get sick of this monotony. Oh, for a real mission.
He finally surrendered. Let his head slide to rest.
His mind zoned out – and he plunged into oblivion.

Meanwhile, as the watchmen slept in their imagined security –
Strode forth quietly a warrior from the depths of the darkness.
The piercing blue eyes narrowed as they rested on the fort,
His body tense and hard as he turned back to the wilderness.

A growling stomach gnawed inside him, his sword blunt and chipped.
Cupped his hands and let out three low hoots like that of an owl.
Turned back to gaze at the fort that thought they were untouchable.
Then he was swallowed up into the darkness and the bitter cold.

Not a man in that fort stirred – it was too cold to move.
Their blankets lulled them asleep as their fires burnt low.
None of them saw the grass start moving:
Hundreds of silhouettes moving in a stealthy row.

From the depths of the darkness when all seemed safe.
Emerged these shadows of men hardened by strife.
Invisible, yet they were there – had been for years.
Waiting patiently to strike. Tonight would be the night.

Blind to the danger, impervious to the warnings,
The Eagle’s Eighth was sound asleep.
Forgetting what it was that got them to this place,
In the morning, the people of the earth would weep.

–

Story behind the poem:
It rings true for many world powers, that they’re greatest enemies were themselves. After achieving amazing things, they drifted away. They got rich and powerful, and forgot that it was through hard work, sweat, blood, and tears, that they got there. They start to abuse the blessings they have, and become blind to the rot in their society. Eventually, as time goes by, an enemy will rise who will be their downfall. It’s only a matter of time. Take heed if you think you stand, lest you fall.
My poem is completely fictional, but I hope you can sort of see what I was trying to bring out. All the old heads weren’t there, the experienced ones. It was a new generation who had forgotten the important things in life. A generation who were of the invincible mindset and forgot that winning is more than just superior weapons, etc. A generation who forgot to be prepared for anything.
GZ

coal photo by Dennis Taufenbach, smoke graphics by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/zuwiu, and soldier images from Centurian and The Eagle.

A Line in the Sand

At the beginning of the Vietnam war, November 1965, the American army would have its first major confrontation with the Vietcong. Three battalions were dropped into a landing zone in an area where enemy activity had been reported. They were here for a battle – and get a battle they did.
Upon landing, one of the companies almost immediately ran into an enemy force, and became separated from the unit in the ensuing firefight.
For two days and nights, one of the biggest battles ever fought in the Vietnam war would rage. 79 U.S. casualties were revealed as the enemy retreated.
It was far from the end however, and one day later, the Vietcong launched one of the most successful ambushes ever, with 155 U.S. soldiers killed. After 16 hours of hell, the battle of Ia drang was finally over. The kill ratio was close to 1 U.S. soldier to 10 Vietcong. In the aftermath, both sides would claim the victory but as we all know – only one would win the war.

Our story focuses n the aftermath, or rather, the battle after the aftermath. In the following military operations, a South Vietnamese Unit came in contact with a fleeing Vietcong unit of sizeable proportions. As they closed quarters, the South Vietnamese called down artillery on the fleeing enemy. The artillary wrecked havoc amongst the enemy troops until – they crossed the border.
An invisible line in the sand stopped the route of the enemy. The American forces were held back by the neutrality of the surrounding countries, in the instance, Cambodia. So the Vietcong now had a safe place to supply and re-group. All they had to do was cross an invisible line in the sand. It was this weakness among others that would prove fatal to the American war machine.
Quoting General Kinnard, “Not to follow them (the Vietcong) violated every principle of warfare.”
I think this sums it up when he was talking about the Vietcong’s general’s declaration that he had learnt how to defeat the Americans, “What he learned was that we were not going to be allowed to chase him across a mythical line in the dirt.”
Now that we look in retrospect at the Vietnam war and the Americanfailure there, it’s easy to point the finger, but how about we learn some lessons from it? Notice I said failure. America had every opportunity to win the Vietnam war. They were the superior force in every way except for numerical. So what was the contributing factor to their demise? We could write books on why they didn’t win, but I wish to outline what I firmly believe is the sole major influencing factor in why they lost: they weren’t prepared to pay the cost.
This attitude of committing but holding back is evidenced by their strategies, their policies, and their retreat. If they were fully committed to victory, they would have crossed the border into Cambodia (they did eventually cross the border in secrecy but it was too late by then.) If they were fully committed, the 50,000+ dead would not have stopped them.
Instead, they spent millions of dollars, lost thousands of lives, and scarred countless more in a futile attempt at winning a war without going all in.
It makes me wonder at times, why did a superpower, unparalleled in power, stop at an invisible line? Was Cambodia such a huge threatening menace? What was there that they could actually do? The only logical answer I can think of, is that they wanted to fight the war on their terms. They didn’t want to commit that much yet. They wanted to keep the war local in Vietnam.
In Hebrews 11, Paul addresses both them and us when he declares, ‘If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him – but we are not of them that fall back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.

When you said to Jesus, ‘I need you in my life.’ And you made him the Lord of your life, you signed up for a battle – and there is no prize if you draw back.
Christian, if you want to be victorious, you MUST NO DRAW BACK. Once you enter battle, if you wish to be the victor, to gain the prize, you cannot draw back.
It doesn’t matter what lines must be crossed, how costly it will be. To get to heaven, you have to go all in or you’ll never win. If you want to save your soul, there can be no turning back.
The allegory with the story we just read to our everyday life is very applicable. See, we too go in search of the enemy. We go looking for a fight we too want to clean our lives up. We go in search of a fight and we find it. We are victorious, but as we pursue the fleeing enemy, we come to an invisible line in our lives that we refuse to cross – and we let the enemy shelter and regroup in this safe alcove.
At some stage, as we start losing and get desperate, we finally launch into this safe alcove, but even then, we do it in secrecy rather than storm in and end it once and for all.
By now, we are getting worn out. Our lack of determination and ruthlessness now comes back to haunt us and we lose the war all because of an invisible line in the sand.
Christian, there’s no honour in losing your soul because of a line in the sand. There’s no victory unless you are prepared to cross into every kingdom of your heart. There will be no crown until you have hunted down the enemy in every corner of your heart. There will be no end to the war until you cross the invisible line in the sand, until you are ready to pay whatever price it takes: the high casualties, war with yet another country. In whatever country, with each step that you take in the escalation of war, there can be no drawing back, only stepping forward to the next level.
Are you going to win the battle for your soul, or will you be one of the many who falter at a line in the sand?