I am a nothing
Didn't go to the NAM
Didn't go to protest
Eased on through IIS
Eased on through Navy
Didn't even do WESPAC
I am a nothing.

Now it's twenty plus year
Still the truth I seek
I've heard the DEERHUNTER
It is good, hard truth
APOCALYPSE NOW fits in too
Now it's PLATOON
They say is truth
Still the truth I seek.

War stories of Mike Bakker
Gut wretching truth
It hurts
it makes you sick
It makes you cry
It hurts like truth hurts.

So many war stories
Three million and more
For each person
For each day
A thousand million stories.

Can I, with empathatic soul, live even one?

I want to cry
I want to cry for it all
Hypocrisy, NO! hypocrazy
Unjustified blood and guts
Dead friends, dead enemies
Dead innocentse
Innocence of all.

The pain
The suffering
The cruelity
The inhumanity
The hatred
The grotesque, barbaric, heinous, detestable, atrocious,
hideous, horrid, grisly, ghastly, ugly, abominable,
disgusting, repulsive, nauseating, disgusting,
repugnant, loathsome REALITY !!!

God, I want to cry !
I need to cry for it all ! 
In fifty-eight
A boy was born
Advisors were sent
The nightmare continued.

I remember the French
My mind is filled with memories
I could remember it all
I've watched flaming Buddist priests
I've seen brains blown out
I've heard of coup de'tat and assassination
I've watched naked little kids cry
I've heard of executions, One for One
And booby-trapped kids
I've seen the mud and muck, monsoon rains
I've felt the humid heat
I watched the body count rise
One or two at first
Then a seven hundred nameless number
I tried and tried to imagine names for
Hundreds of men, dying, week after week
I remember the two I had seen in high school
And I felt for the hundreds
I remember having to get permission to shoot
Of not giving chase into Laos or Cambodia
Of limited bombing, of POW's and MIA's

Then there's MS101 in ROTC
This captain who brought back pictures
God, how I wish I had walked out in protest
I wouldn't have lasted ten days
Me, killing other people?
But others were there
Others who saw, smelt, tasted, heard, felt
Sensed with their own senses
That REALITY !
The screams, blood, muscle, and bone
The legless, armless, eyeless, headless
The straks, progues, grunts
short time stick, incoming, outgoing, gooks, -san, bami bam
IV, VC, NVRA, MK, M16, M70, LZ, LP, Lurps
All the things only those
Who were there could possibly know

In seventy-five
The boy was killed
The advisors left
The nightmare continued.