Poem: "Freedom is not Free" by Cadet Major Kelly Strong, Air Force ROTC, Holmstead, FL

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	I watched the flag pass by one day. It fluttered in the breeze. A young Marine saluted it, and then he stood at ease. I looked at him in uniform so young, so tall, so proud, with hair cut square and eyes alert, he'd stand out in any crowd. I thought how many men like him had fallen through the years. How many died on foreign soil? How many mother's tears? How many pilots' planes shot down? How many died at sea? How many foxholes were soldiers' graves? No, freedom is not free. I heard the sound of "Taps" one night, when everything was still. I listened to the bugler play and felt a sudden chill. I wondered just how many times that "Taps" had meant "Amen", when a flag draped a coffin of a brother or a friend. I thought of all the children, of the mothers and the wifes, of fathers, sons and husbands with interrupted lifes. I thought about a graveyard at the bottem of the sea, of unmarked graves in Arlingtion. No freedom is not free.

Poem: "Freedom is not Free" by Cadet Major Kelly Strong, Air Force ROTC, Holmstead, FL submitted by 170th Member: Dennis Durak, July 2003