The buses idle in their own breath,
white ghosts against the armory wall.
Boots scuff gravel, low voices drift
like smoke that doesn’t rise.
We’ve done this a thousand times -
gear checks, roll calls,
rifles kissed clean by oil and habit -
but this time the air is different.
Staff Sergeant Klempke moves down the line,
his hand a slow metronome of farewell.
We thought him unbreakable…
a man carved from cadence and command.
When his voice caught,
none of us looked away.
Even the engines seemed to hush
so he could find his breath again.
Something in that tremor - his eyes,
the crack in his throat -
ran through us like a shock.
For the first time, we understood
how far we were about to go.
Three years he built us
from raw metal and sweat,
and now he’s the one left standing still
as we drive into the dark -
bound for a war half a world away,
his face in the mirrors,
that look…half pride, half loss -
the kind that follows you
far past the desert’s edge.
GBS
Herkimer, NY
2010
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