Call Me Johnny Boy from Pore Folks, Potlucks and Parables

71. Call Me Johnny Boy------------------------------------------

Call Me Johnny Boy was written for a Veteran's Day Program at Maple Hill Church of Christ, 2008.

You know me, I first made my appearance at the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 and they called us the minutemen. It took a few years to wrap up that little scuffle with King George’s regulars - them in their shinny red coats, but we kept at it and had that job wrapped up by 1782 – a free country at last – or so we thought.
But those pesky Brits popped back up again in 1812, and we had to convince them all over again that we weren’t joking – All men had indeed been created equal and these United States are and of rights ought to be free and independent States.
Then there was that little misunderstanding with Mexico concerning Texas in 1846, and we demonstrated to our neighbors down south that the lone star really was going to be “one among many” other stars, on that field of blue on the old Stars and Stripes. We do like to do a job up right though, and we ended up not only with Texas, but with California and the whole southwest thrown in for good measure.
Our next job came in 1861 and it might have been the saddest and hardest of all. They called us Johnny Reb or Billy Yank, and we had to fight brother against brother and brave men on both sides sacrificed and died for hearth and home. Five Aprils that job dragged on – from 1861 to 1865 and no war has ever been more costly. The first battle was just off Charleston Harbor at a place called Fort Sumter and the Last one – Well, it was right here, over in Nashville.
Some say that as many as 700,000 of us didn’t come home from that one and a lot of those that did would never be the same. But the Union – it lived on.
For our next little frickkas they hung the name of Rough Riders on us and we sailed off to Cuba in 1898 with old Teddy Roosevelt himself. It wasn’t much of a war unless you were one of he ones there. But to the soldiers who are there, every war is the biggest war – the only war – To them it was the war in which they gave the last full measure of their devotion.
By 1917, we were called on to go help our friends in Europe as German aggression threatened freedom all around this old world. Doughboys – that’s what they called us for this one, and we fought and suffered in a whole new way as our enemies gassed us in the mud filled trenches where we huddled. Between the Hun’s 88s, the wretched trenches, and the Spanish flu – we suffered terribly, but we Yanks went over the top on command. We didn’t start it, but we sure ended it, and by 1918 it was over, over there. In fact it was over 90 years ago this very day. On the eleventh month, the eleventh day, and at the eleventh hour, those big guns stopped, there was silence, and a new wreath of freedom was laid at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.
That last one had been the war to end all wars, the Great War, we called it, but Hitler and His Nazi cronies didn’t play by our rules and by 1941 we were called on again. This time the Japanese had attacked our fleet in Pearl. Dog Faces, Leathernecks, fly boys and swabbies, we were, and we were on the move around the globe. On Normandy Beach, and on the sands of Iwo Jima; we fought for the things we held dear, and for the loved ones we left back home. Finally it was over when President Truman dropped the big one and convinced Emperor Hiro Hito to stand down..
In 1950 we had a little job over in places like Wiejombu, Pusan, and at the Chosan Resovior, and even though thousands of us never came home – the politicians didn’t want to call it a war, so they said it was a police action. 169 Thousand Casualties – some police action.
In 1962 we got involved in a little country in Southeast Asia none of us had ever heard of, and most of us couldn’t pronounce – Vietnam they called it – that one was the big winner as far as time goes because it drug on for 13 years. We didn’t have any pet names for that one – in fact most people stateside didn’t seem to like us for the job we had to do. But like always, we just went and did what we had to do, then came home and quietly went back to work in the world – just thankful we were not one of the 58,000 that got shipped home in a bag.
Now we have a whole new part of the world to worry about – a place called Iraq and we are in the middle of our second war, where sunglasses and desert battle fatigues are the uniform of the day. Oh, and by the way there is a little side job in Afghanistan thrown in just for good measure. I guess we don’t have all of the outcome pegged on this one yet, but we have always done the job before – even when the politicians didn’t exactly cooperate. You see, a soldier’s job has never been to consider the politics of the matter, just to do what we were sent to do, and let the politicians, the professors and the civilians ponder the right of it.
We are American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, and we have fought, suffered, sacrificed, and died for your freedom. Our families have waited with dread, fear, and loneliness for our return – sometimes waited in vain. It is the price of freedom and we are proud to have served –
I guess it doesn’t much matter what you called us, because whatever you called us, we always answered the call.