MY NAME IS E.G.A.

                                       MY NAME IS E.G.A.
My name is Eagle Globe and Anchor, sometimes known as the E.G.A. I am
found in every state, city ,town or village in the country. I am found on some ring fingers and engraved on forearms in ink, I can be found on the front doors of homes and on the front yard flag poles just under the Stars and Stripes. I appear on cars and trucks, in back windows and bumpers,
trunk lids and tailgates, front grills and Lic.plates. I am found on book covers and posters, pictures and plaques hanging on walls. My likeness is found on necklaces and key chains tee shirts and jackets, hats, belt buckles and coats. You will find me in lesser known places that Marines know and others don't. Like the base of the flag pole at the Vietnam Memorial Wall, were I shine, because Marines from 8th and I polish me everyday, a new tradition is born. You will also find me on head stones spread across this land. But the place I shine brightest can not be seen, for it is in the hearts of everyman and woman who are known, as Marines.

Bruce Knipp

THE UNINVITED

                                                THE UNINVITED

A landscape once lush with fields of crops, grass laden hills with wild flowers as blankets of color. Small islands of trees and bushes dot the country side, with small quaint villages tucked away down old country roads. The sweet smell of fresh air bathed in the warm sun light of a soft spring day, where song bird calls, fill the air. Such was the land before the great war, the war to end all wars.
The war came, it came uninvited, and it came for an extended stay. The once dark rich brown dirt was now black from all the blood shed that soaked into the ground till
it seemed it couldn't adsorb anymore. Grass and flowers grow no more, long ago stomped down by a million soldiers feet, trees that once stood proud, now nothing but twisted splintered shapes devoid of limbs, almost unrecognizable as trees anymore.
A haze now covered the sky filtering out the sun, and the stench of war fills your nostrils with the smells of death, and the only birds seen are vultures circling over head. Between the trenches of the apposing armies is no mans land, and the only man to walk there unafraid is the grim reaper himself.
Over the top, and out of the trenches the opposing army advances into no mans land.
Now the silence is broken, and the sounds of war erupt, explosions and the sounds of bullets, noise so loud you can almost not hear the death screams of the man next to you. A short time later all falls silent, and the thousand yards between trenches is once again littered with the dead and wounded. When the war started
on the 28 of June 1914 they said they'ed be home for Christmas, they just didn't tell them what year.
65 million soldiers from 6 major countries would fight in this war, 10 million would never come home, and
10 million civilians would also die from war, starvation and disease.
Nothing last forever, and so it is with war, on the 11th day, of the 11th month, at the 11th hour 1919 the war came to and end. The land will return to it's former beauty, and the soldiers will try to forget all the sights and sounds and smells of war.
The war was won, but the peace was lost. In 1939 a mere 20 years it would begin again.
Now playing at your favorite battlefield, WW2, THE SEQUEL.

Bruce Knipp