What Is A Soldier

James Robert Adams
Military Photo

You have chosen to measure your life in moments,

For soldiers live only for today!

Tomorrow doesn't come for the soldier,

Death is only one step away.

You will train, you will drill,

You will fight and you will die

Yet perhaps someday you will pause

And you will wonder why.

Now the answer to this question

Is very hard to find,

For it’s little more than experiences,

Folded away in your mind.

It’s all the times you've stood and watched,

The sun slip from your sight,

Across those rows of crosses,

That stand so straight and white.

It’s all the times you've dreamed alone

And all the dreams you've shared

With that someone special,

The girl who really cared.

A Photo of His Medals

It’s standing in your uniform

Your mother by your side,

Knowing her eyes are filled with tears

Because her heart is filled with pride.

It’s those bright summer days of childhood

It’s those solemn winter days of age,

It’s all the blues of springtime,

It’s all the falls of beige.

This poem was written by my first cousin, James Robert Adams born June 6, 1942.  His name is on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D. C.  He graduated from West Point on June 07, 1967.  He was a 2^nd LT. and commenced his tour of duty in Vietnam February 14, 1968 was KIA March 20, 1968 and he is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

Because of how this poem is worded I think he might have written it sometime between graduation and shipping out to Vietnam.  His mother would have been at his side after the graduation ceremony with tears of pride in her eyes.

At what point he had visited Arlington National Cemetery, I have no clue unless it was when he visited my brother Neal occasionally who lived in Washington D C at that time.

Before he shipped out to Vietnam he visited my brother one last time and left a big trunk with him; to keep for him. Sometime after my brother moved to Key West, and it was several years after Jim was KIA, he opened the trunk and this poem was among the contents.

I sometimes wonder if my cousin Jim had a premonition of his death when he visited Arlington and that resulted in his writing this poem. There were several other poems in the contents of the trunk, but this was the only one that mentioned the rows of crosses in Arlington; which is now his earthly resting place.