For Duty

For Duty

After standing for hours, on her aching feet
Beside the veteran surgeon as he races to save each life.
The small young woman whose day of nursing is complete.
She tries to forget the sounds of the operating room's strife.

Three times a soldier was revived from cold death's door.
The amputation bucket was filled with useless limbs.
Her dreams that night would be filled with blood and gore.
The outlook for the last soldier was whispered as being grim.

The cold shower could not numb her senseless aches and pain,
From the steady thought of corpses that came through that day.
One boy was from her hometown in the northwest part of Maine.
Another boy was bagged for home on his twenty-first birthday.

She worked each busy shift and always gave her best.
Her letters home were short and sometimes in the mailbag late.
But the loneliness and the strong feelings of being depressed,
Her disgust at war and tragedies she saw, she could never fully communicate.

Once again the helicopters sing a song, of the rain of work to come.
The OR's floors are scrubbed clean and the tools of hope are on the tray.
The surgeon's grim face show the horrors he must overcome.
And the call to duty, each hopeful man and woman must obey.