The infantryman: the ultimate weapon in war
TO THE ULTIMATE WEAPON
by Col Anthony L.P. Wermuth
First in, last out……………………………..Fidelio,
The Angel Gabriel in a muddy helmet,
A flame-charred devil on the ninth level of Inferno–
The Infantryman!
The fighter’s fighter.
The soldier.
He travels not along the superhighways,
But along the faint trails of the world.
High along the ridges and down the defiles,
Tracing the veins and capillaries on the skin of the earth,
To thrust his bayonet, personally,
Into the incandescent heart of battle.
The cost of this trip is the highest extracted in war.
Not for him the three or ten-hours-a-day war.
Sheltered by a parasol of planes,
Served by men and machines of infinite variety,
Reassured by mortars and ships,
Prowling the nearby meadows and seas,
He is, nonetheless, in the light and darkness,
Perpetually shadowed by death.
Until, at last, on some strange promontory,
In the midst of comrades fallen,
Suddenly, he stands alone.
The only powers of body and spirit
Available to be summoned
Are such as he happened to bring to the battle –
To the personal battle
No other man is called upon to undergo.
Sooner or later,
Struggling in the vortex of the whirlwind,
Tested over and over again,
With the scarred body,
The bloody fist, the indomitable heart,
The blistered feet, and the fighting hands,
He stands alone, where the danger is.
The Infantryman volunteers for nothing,
But every lethal device in war volunteers for him.
When they come after him,
They’ve tried and failed with everything else
To reach the point of power,
The focus of freedom,
The pivot of decision,
And the hottest spot in the war.
Sprawler during every opportunity,
Plodder, racer, stalker, raider, waiter,
Walker over mountains, glaciers & swamps.
Outwitting the machine he witted,
He does what no one else can do –
He storms the parapets yet untaken
By all the machines and munitions of war.
He lays his manhood, sometimes not yet reached,
On the line,
And sometimes stays forever there,
Reformed to a grotesque memorial.
Having given a massive transfusion
To hills like home, or desert sands.
If there is blood on his hands,
It is a stain he carries for every man, woman, and Child in friendly lands.
The rifleman lives, if he does,
On what is left after lending time.
The beloved people of his country
Live afterward on borrowed time – his.
Decorated with a flower,
Flushed from a field bathed in deadliness,
Dressed in dirt, with dusty lungs,
He hardly suggests the beau ideal
Of every other fighting man.
Too numerous to be distinguished:
Too full of the memory of fear to swagger;
Too tired to boast:
Too well aware of the luck of his own survival
To pontificate;
Too mindful of a platoon
Of missing heroes to be a hero;
Too grateful to demean any other fighter.
If he is unimpressed with others,
It is the natural result of being unimpressed
With himself.
He is the personal fighter,
The champion,
The first in and the last out,
The irreplaceable,
The ultimate weapon –
The Infantryman!
