We rode our birds to lofty heights of space,
where eagles never flew,
nor falcons swiftly stooped.
With the pounding roar of a thousand horses,
we soared.

We saw the sudden black blossoms with crimson centers,
and we heard the rattle of steel seeds of death
along the flanks of our birds.

We saw broken birds in mortal agony,
show their shining bellies to the sun and fall,
with crimson streams from gaping wounds to earth,
ending the dreams of boys that too soon had become men.

Boys that remembered the velvet brush of a young girl's lips,
and a whispered promise to wait.
Down fell the dreams of home, of anticipated
joys of fatherhood, of family,
of a peace never known.

In the savage skies of the enemy, we new our birds
as the spawn of their bellies turned great cities to ash,
that stood before man's remembrance.

We now have eyes that see dimly, our walk is a bit uncertain,
and where our birds touched ground
is an overgrown emerald green.

The rumbling roar of our bird's passage has muted to a silence.
Faces of young men have receded into the dim recesses of memory.
But at times, when the sun paints the eastern sky with brushes of red,
we hear the stirring of our birds, for yet another climb into the rare halls of air
above foreign skies.

For a fleeting moment we are boys again,
boys too soon men,
remembering with a quiet and humble heart,
that we answered the call to our nation's arms,
and we are proud