Twenty or twenty-one. All volunteers. Barely women.
Straight from school in a thousand small towns.
Straight into the mud and blood and madness.
We dragged our dying to their open arms.
Twelve hours shifts; often more. Wreckage of violence.
Round eyes. Smiles that healed. Hearts that broke.
Girls treating boys. Telling the necessary lies.
You're OK. You're fine. You're going home.
Valor danced in their faces. Lips that spoke hope.
Old now or dead. But forever young and alive
in the memories of 150,000 wounded soldiers
they saved and sent back to the world.
   ~mce