Poetry

Ariel Schloesser



Has anybody seen my youth? I know I had it back in '67; Nineteen-year-old virgin soldier, all innocent fun And clumsy efforts to lose innocence.

I think it was still with me in early '68, Shakedown ops and TAOR patrols were still a game; So I guess I must have lost it during Tet, Perhaps It slipped away quietly, first time I lost a mate.

I know I didn't have it in the Long Hais, That was no place for innocence, no place for youth; It couldn't have survived at Coral, and since Balmoral Memory gets hazy, so I can't be sure.

I started mising it when I came home, Still only twenty, while many of my old friends Were celebrating their coming of age; But something was wrong - they were only kids, So they still had theirs - I must have lost mine; Somehow I knew it was time to move on.

Now, many years have passed, a lot of miles Travelled on this old grunt's tired feet, I know there's no point looking, it's gone for good; But something strange has happened along the way; While searching for lost youth, I found my manhood;

None of my generation who stayed at home Will ever find theirs as surely as I found mine.

Lachlan Irvine

====(Notes: "Shakedown operations and TAOR patrols" were tasks given to infantry units early in their tour of duty, to help them get acclimatised; "Tet" refers to the Tet Offensive of February 1968; "The Long Hais", "Coral" and "Balmoral" were the scenes of major battles in 1968; "grunt" is a slang term for an infantry soldier). ====