9/11

I am here in my home in Southern Utah. When I woke this morning I saw an American flag on the street before my house that I had not put up. I asked Lu about it. Apparently we pay a small stipend to the Boy Scouts and they come by on patriotic days and put up a flag. I looked up and down my street. I took a drive around the town. Everywhere I looked I saw American flags. Erected by Boy Scouts on a bright, Saturday morning.

I love my small, Southern Utah town. I love the Boy Scouts. I love my Country. I fear not for my nation because we still breed Sheepdogs and those who honor them. On this September day, when we remember horror and death and sudden, violent, unprovoked war we also remember honor and bravery and Patriotism and self sacrifice. We remember our honored dead and those who bring death to our enemies.

We cannot be conquered, we cannot be beaten we cannot be made to offer obeisance. We can be killed but woe to those who do because regardless of politics, party or those who would offer their necks to the yoke, we are still a nation that produces Sheepdogs in great numbers and Sheepdogs know what a wolf looks and tastes like and cannot be deterred.

To the enemies of my beloved America, foreign and domestic, read these words and fear. They were written by a man both remarkable and ordinary. An American Sheepdog. We will never turn away from the fight. We will never sleep until the last wolf breathes his last gasping breath.
This I swear.

Six

The Sheepdogs
Most humans truly are like sheep
Wanting nothing more than peace to keep
To graze, grow fat and raise their young,
Sweet taste of clover on the tongue.
Their lives serene upon Life’s farm,
They sense no threat nor fear no harm.
On verdant meadows, they forage free
With naught to fear, with naught to flee.
They pay their sheepdogs little heed
For there is no threat; there is no need.

To the flock, sheepdog’s are mysteries,
Roaming watchful round the peripheries.
These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar
With the fetid reek of the carnivore,
Too like the wolf of legends told,
To be amongst our docile fold.
Who needs sheepdogs?
What good are they?
They have no use, not in this day.
Lock them away, out of our sight
We have no need of their fierce might.

But sudden in their midst a beast
Has come to kill, has come to feast
The wolves attack; they give no warning
Upon that calm September morning
They slash and kill with frenzied glee
Their passive helpless enemy
Who had no clue the wolves were there
Far roaming from their Eastern lair.
Then from the carnage, from the rout,
Comes the cry, “Turn the sheepdogs out!”

Thus is our nature but too our plight
To keep our dogs on leashes tight
And live a life of illusive bliss
Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss.
Until he has us by the throat,
We pay no heed; we take no note.
Not until he strikes us at our core
Will we unleash the Dogs of War
Only having felt the wolf pack’s wrath
Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path.

And the wolves will learn what we’ve shown before;
We love our sheep, we Dogs of War.

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66