Vámonos with Steve Walker

Verse

Poetry

The Battle Trilogy

Three long poems, each in the voice of a soldier from a different war. Together they are Steve’s best-known written work, recognized at the U.S. Army War College.

These poems are presented as transcribed from recordings of Steve reading them aloud; the line breaks are editorial.

Hear Steve recite the trilogy Part One Part Two

I

The Battle of Goose Green

Falklands, 1982

The Lads and me are of the big country, the wild Highlands of Scotland. It is a masculine place, all hunt and chase, red stag and peregrine falcon, and some sheep and Presbyterians.
We were Royal Marines in our feral youth, part of an SAS-led detachment, our service to date but a half-filled plate, spent hunting down IRA gunmen. Lovely sport, of course, but just short of pure warfare’s true fulfillment.
Oh, what a happy day we got the news: real war breaks in the South Atlantic. Maggie Thatcher was the Iron Lady, you crossed her at your own peril. Well, in our mess the Lads and I were set, full of battle’s sweet anticipation, because she said the Falklands shall be retaken.
Our SAS contingent left early, clandestine operations. For 30 days they would live alone on sheep and fresh rainwater, by twos and threes, scout about and make good reconnaissance. Mirages screamed overhead, seconds behind them Exocets incoming. We saw the Sheffield burning.
Our orders were, you’ll take Goose Green, straight-on infantry, simple. Oh, and you’ll come back with your shield, my boy, or you will come back laid out on it.
The Falklands was no Desert Storm, there were no uplink video wonders. We walked to the green, it took us a week, every night a cold camp, every day that heavy pack. It was like Wallace, a bit of the medieval.
The Queen’s rules of battle give her elite troops wide discretion. She let us paint our faces blue, a bearing fierce and howling, so that at dawn we swept off that slope, one on one, face to face, straight into them.
The Falklands are a lot like home, open and wild and forgotten. I might live there now, but they do not have red stag or peregrine falcon. I still hear the lad say, "Look what we did here today, see how our enemy lies face down in sheep and Presbyterians."
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II

The Battle of Midway

WWII, 1942

Three miles down, on the floor of a trench, out in the central Pacific, the bodies of some men I knew still lie in their own planes’ wreckage.
Midway has been studied by every nation’s war college. But understand the simple truth of what it took to win that battle: it took those men who cleared those decks, not knowing, am I living or dying?
For the enemy, in those early days, it was all rampaging conquest: Singapore, Corregidor, Guam. They almost won it. The Japanese were a warrior breed, with centuries of martial tradition. Bushido was no idle threat, no piece of Allied propaganda. Bushido means, I will fight with my last breath that I might take yours in my passing.
I killed some men in fair dogfights, and I murdered some while they were sleeping. We shot up their ships, we strafed submarines, we landed in 40-knot crosswinds.
Now listen: our flag and our country, Mom and her pie, they all have their place, God bless them. But in this kind of fighting you must be led by a man, seasoned, hardened.
And now I’m in my final years, I have grandchildren of comforting number. Yet not one of them knows how this gentle old man they see every Easter, every Christmas, fought all the way into Tokyo Bay, driven by a rage for vengeance.
Because three miles down, on the floor of a trench, out in that huge expanse of ocean, the bodies of some real good men lie in a deep, awesome silence. I served more than 1,000 days, saw two dozen ruthless fights, but for Midway there would have been none of them. All hail those men who lie there today, and consider their moment of purpose.
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III

The Battle of Ia Drang Valley

Vietnam, 1965

In mid-November 1965, in the western part of the central Highlands, where the light, in a triple canopy tumble, fell to the floor gently, of the Ia Drang Valley.
For a youth like me, raised in West Texas, 1950s, life was a drought, dreams broken at Nature’s insistence. Vietnam was so green. See that neon flash of wing, smell that wet fresh tiger-scat steam, all manner of flowering vines climbing to the light, that perfect light in a triple canopy tumble, fell like a cloak around all of our men, and we thought we were just going to walk right in.
The answer came from a unit of historic significance, the American regiment that, in an annual event, celebrates its own annihilation, of Little Bighorn fame. Yes, the United States Seventh Cavalry. And just like that day at the Greasy Grass, they rode in singing Garryowen.
On the 14th, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry touched down, part of the First Air Cavalry Division, about 10 miles from the Cambodian border. Three battalions strong they came down to the valley and met us.
All that first day we held them at bay with M16s and a few light mortars. My 1st Battalion had let itself get in a situation, 8 to 1, head-on. One company flew through an impossible enemy fire. The word went out all the way to Westmoreland: we are going to lose the entire 1st Battalion.
By mid-afternoon, sunlight roared through in a hot bloom. There were no more leaves on the trees, there was no more triple canopy, that forest was a smoking ruin. And still they came in, blowing bugles, some of them side by side, firing low, straight on in, again and again and again.
We found dead on the ground 634 NVA bodies. Our KIA was 79. In the way discipline was maintained by the rank-and-file, in the face of a fire no infantry before or since has ever witnessed, in the way 1st Battalion made that do-or-die decision, never considered surrender, the Ia Drang commands a place in the pantheon of what men have done in battle.
31 years, as I write, have passed since that fight. Strange as it may seem, no flashbacks, no dreams interrupt the peace of my sleep. One day I’d like to shake the hand of the enemy commander and reminisce with those NVA veterans. I would walk with them into the central Highlands. Everything would be so green. See that neon flash of wings, smell that wet fresh tiger-scat steam, look up at those flowering vines climbing, as the light, that perfect light in her triple canopy tumble, wraps warm arms around us all once again.
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