Mcnamara's Army Poem by Doug Lane

I want to know
what became
of the kid
in my infantry brigade

who belonged to Project 100,000,
or McNamara's Army,
the kids
the Pentagon,
which desperately needed
more warm bodies
for the war,
allowed to volunteer
for active duty
even though
they couldn't pass
the mental exam
- - which was a very low bar,
lower than any limbo stick,
lower, perhaps,
than the dementia exam
President Trump
brags about acing.

This kid
was pulling guard
in a bunker
on LZ Bayonet,
in I Corps, RVN, in 1968,
and he left his
M-79 grenade launcher
leaning against
the inner wall
of the bunker
with the safety off.

He accidently bumped into it
and the weapon fired,
sending the fist sized round
halfway into the forehead
of his bunkermate,
but not detonating it
- - so the victim
lived for a couple days
in a brain dead coma
before dying.

And the careless kid
with the moron's
IQ
was court-martialed
for negligent homicide
and convicted
and sentenced
to a term
in Leavenworth.

The good news was
that the findings
of the botched court-martial
were tossed out
by the judge advocates
at division
so the kid
was never punished

except by himself
because he wasn't too stupid
to have a conscience
though the bureaucrats
who invented
Project One Hundred Thousand
clearly
were.