11-11-2025, 06:21 AM
If you are able, save them a place inside of you
and save one backward glance when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.
Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
and save one backward glance when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.
Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
