| The Marine wife is a special individual. When she was a girl, her dreams were bold, as bold as her fine, free gaze; And every gift of grace and mind was hers in her younger days. When she was a girl, a golden girl, with a soul as fine as fire. She could outshine the brightest jewel that a rich man's love might buy her. Yes hers could have been the glittering path though a careless, carefree life. But she fell in love with a Marine, so she became a military wife. Away from the home of her childhood she marched at her husband's side, For she choose a wide and winding road when she became a bride. And sometimes the road was a hard one, so different from what she had planned; And sometimes her steps would grow weary as she followed the drum and the fife; But she set about making the world her home because she was a military wife. She learned to build a hearth for them wherever her man was sent; And she knelt to plant a garden every time he pitched their tent. Yes, she always planted a garden though she never saw it grow, For she knew before the flowers came that she would hve to go. But she left each garden gladly though it cut her like a knife, For she hoped it might bring some comfort to another military wife. To the hardships in her married life she brought one simple truth, A promise that once was spoken in the ancient words of Ruth: "Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Thy people shall be my people and thy God shall be my God." She shared his joys and sorrows as they made their way through life, For she was a proud to love a Marine and to be a military wife. She bore the weight of worrying that fate might hold in store; And the wordless fear of waiting when her soldier went to war; And the nights that she spent fearing that her waiting was in vain; And the pain of wanting someone she might never hold again. But she bore his children gladly through uncertainty and strife, And they never heard her crying for she was a military wife. She raised a military family with the faith her love had taught her; And she gave the pride she had insideto her son and to her daughter; And she taught them to love freedom and to know what it was worth, As they helped her plant her gardens in the corners of the earth. ANd she never wished for better that the road they marched through life, Because she was as much Marine as she was a military wife. Adapted from a poem by Caroline Franklin Berry |
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| THE SPOUSE METAL |
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