Echo Drum

The Navajos in boot camp showed a greater stamina
From walking miles in the desert sun.
None failed the training, not the riflemen,
Nor yet the twenty nine who wrote the code.
The alphabet became the animals,
And stars together shone upon the ranks.
Now beast and bird and concept blended
Into canon, tank, and shield.
Pure concepts were translated into orders in the field.
On Cape Gloucester, the code would map artillery
Barrages, and throughout the Pacific stage.
When air-born casualties on the Solomons fell
From fifty three to seven percent,
The Japanese began to scream
Across the radio waves, yet all in vain.
Our boys with speed made simple phrases fly
Before the howling foe could spin a dial.
While bodyguards on Guadalcanal
Escorted Navajos mistaken for the enemy,
A worse mistake Macarthur made in taking Peleliu,
A burning waste of steel and many lives.
Then Iwi Jima was to be the future base of bombing raids,
The slow beginning of the unforgiving push
Toward the homeland of Japan.
That brutal struggle, yard by yard with bitter loss,
Until the great flag rose on Suribachi,
And Teddy Draper Jr. spoke it silently
To General Smith’s command.
The photo sped across the globe,
Now slowing into sculpture in the nation’s capitol.
Yet Okinawa was another step across that bloody sea.
Not soon enough the land was won,
And still inevitably in freedom’s long advance.
In every place they served with honor and skill.
Arriving home to no parade,
They had only shown the granite will of any warrior.
Their voices echo silently, their actions march
In future time and space, defending arid, Southwest fields,
And bright-hued monuments that shaped the enduring people.
Between the canyons and above the ancient, American sands,
Still beating loud across the land, high over tropic seas,
The voices in the drums are calling for democracy,
And turning back the Emperor from islands meant for paradise.