Harry Wilmans by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

I was just turned twenty-one, / And Henry Phipps, the Sunday school superintendent, / Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.

"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said, / "Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs / Or the greatest power in Europe."

And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved / As he spoke.

And I went to the war in spite of my father, / And followed the flag till I saw it raised / By our camp in a rice field near Manila, / And all of us cheered and cheered it.

But there were flies and poisonous things;

And there was the deadly water, / And the cruel heat, / And the sickening, putrid food;

And the smell of the trench just back of the tents / Where the soldiers went to empty themselves;

And there were the whores who followed us, full of syphilis;

And beastly acts between ourselves or alone, / With bullying, hatred, degradation among us, / And days of loathing and nights of fear / To the hour of the charge through the steaming swamp, / Following the flag, / Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.

Now there's a flag over me in Spoon River!

A flag! A flag!