Allied Forces Poem by Sidney P. Roberts II

Anyway the instructor seemed sound. That was good because sometimes they’re not and they think they’re all salty and are just God’s gift to the gun-toting community and you just haven’t been around long enough to have seen the incredible things they have seen and they are so much more than you will ever be. The funniest is when they are veterans and have had a combat tour and seem proud about that enemy marksmanship badge. My friend has a Purple Heart but will never admit it and neither would I if in fact I had one, which I certainly do NOT.
But this guy was modest and later we got off the subject and the military topic came up. He asked the class had any of us ever jumped out of an airplane before and my old friend just looked at me and pointed with his eyes to his breast pocket where the whiskey was and smiled and I remembered that cherry blast we had together when we got to Vicenza.
It was back when we were friends and peers and we said good-bye to each other just in case we should not make it to the ground alive and they made us drink a certain amount of beer beforehand for traditional reasons. I remembered how on that night I was so scared that I couldn’t get out far enough and so I bounced along the side of the aircraft a few times as I fell and how later at the bar all we could stand to drink was water and he told me the same thing happened to him. He winked at me and we didn’t raise our hands. Then someone made the old remark that they always make.
“What kind of a man is stupid enough to jump out of a perfectly good airplane? ”
“Those are the words of a leg, ” I said.
A leg is someone who is not Airborne and walks to his objective instead of bringing the destruction down from heaven like some kind of angel of death. The jealousy and insecurity which dirty nasty legs feel will always compel them to criticize the paratrooper. It’s a fact of life as real as the irrational behavior one is prone to when in love.
My old friend winked at me and the instructor saw it and he smiled at us. I saw his eyes and knew right then and there that an ally had been revealed. We were now at least three strong in the class.