Preface to The Phillips Cycle
Every platoon has one man who becomes its measure. Not because of rank, but because the rhythm of the unit; its discipline, its humor, its endurance; starts to move in time with his. For us, that was Staff Sergeant Phillips. He built us from raw metal and long nights, from repetition and correction, from his quiet belief that if you taught a man to master fear, he might learn to master himself.
We thought of him as permanent, a constant in the noise. When he didn’t deploy with us, it was like losing gravity. And later; when the letters stopped, when the names began to thin, when silence became his only formation; we understood that leadership can wound as deeply as combat.
These poems are for him...the sergeant who stayed behind, who carried our ghosts until they became too heavy to set down. They’re about duty, and the toll of duty; about what remains of a man when his mission is finished but the memory keeps marching.
He built us to move on without him.
None of us wanted to prove him right.
I. Staff Sergeant Phillips
The buses idle in their own breath,
white ghosts pressed to the armory wall.
Boots scuff gravel - a sound like doubt.
The air hangs heavy, unspoken.
We’ve done this drill a thousand times;
gear checks, roll calls, rifles kissed
clean by oil and habit;
but this morning feels borrowed.
Staff Sergeant Phillips moves down the line,
his hand a slow metronome of farewell.
We thought him unbreakable,
a man built from orders and long miles.
When his voice caught,
none of us looked away.
Even the engines hushed
so he could find his breath again.
And in that hush I felt my father’s hand,
steadying mine before my first fall -
the same helpless pride, the same fear
that something once whole might break.
Three years he built us
from raw metal and sweat,
and now he’s the one left standing still
as we vanish into distance.
The bus windows fog with breath and waiting.
His face stays in the mirrors -
that look, half pride, half loss -
the kind that follows you
into the places he trained you to survive.
_______________
II. Phillips, After the Buses Pulled Away
The buses were gone before the frost burned off.
Their diesel breath hung a while,
white ghosts pressed to the sky,
then thinned.
I told myself to stand at ease,
but the body remembers what it’s for.
Even at rest, I count heads,
check straps,
listen for the click that means ready.
Old habits,
like phantom limbs,
still move.
For three years I shaped them;
raw metal and midnight drills,
anger hammered into muscle,
fear burned clean through repetition.
They were boys when they came;
they left like men who knew where to aim.
God help me,
I thought I’d made them safe.
When command said no,
that I’d stay behind,
I nodded - like a good soldier does -
then went home and stood in my kitchen
with my hands open,
waiting for the next order.
But none came.
Only the hum of the fridge,
the sound of boots I didn’t need to wear.
The quiet was too loud.
I’m proud -
that’s the part they’ll remember.
But pride is heavy when there’s nowhere to set it down.
I see their faces when I close my eyes -
the ones who joked through fear,
the ones who’ll come back different,
the one who might not.
I’ve spent my life building other men’s courage.
Now I have to learn my own
without them.
The morning’s full light finds me still at the armory door,
saluting what’s gone -
not the flag,
not the mission,
but the way they looked back once
before the road took them.
_______________
III. In Memoriam: Staff Sergeant Phillips
(for the one who stayed behind)
He bore the names like medals pinned,
Each letter folded, each man gone -
And though the field was far from him,
Its silence claimed him, one by one.
At first he walked the armory grounds,
Still counting heads that weren’t there.
The wind would turn, and in its sound
He’d call the roll of empty air.
By winter’s end he rarely spoke,
Just nodded when the others passed.
His voice, once steel, had thinned to smoke...
A breath that couldn’t seem to last.
He fixed his shirts, he swept the floor,
He kept his boots against the wall.
But every scuff, each grain, each door,
Returned a step, a name, a call.
The town went on. The drill fields froze.
A flag was raised, the traffic moaned.
He stood until the daylight closed,
Then walked the long way home alone.
No orders came. No word was sent.
The years grew quiet, cold, and thin.
He carried still the battalion—
But none remained to carry him.
When spring returned, the lilacs spread
Their sweetness through the yard once more.
He’d planted them for those long dead;
They bloomed against his barracks door.
We found his cap, his notes, his pen -
A list of names, each one crossed through.
And written last: For all my men -
I could not keep them. But they knew.
Now on the wall his picture fades,
The frame half-tilt, the glass long dim.
Yet in the hush the memory stays...
We learned to stand because of him.
_______________
Afterword — The Leader Who Stayed Behind
Every unit has one man who becomes its spine. Not because he shouts the loudest, but because everyone else learns to steady their breathing against his. For us, that was Staff Sergeant Phillips. He wasn’t heroic in the movie sense; his heroism was rhythm; inspection after inspection, drill after drill, the same voice cutting through fatigue and noise until discipline; became muscle memory and trust became reflex.
When we learned he wouldn’t deploy with us, the silence was heavier than any order. It’s strange to call it grief, but that’s what it was, the grief of losing the one who had shaped our fear into purpose. He had taught us how to move as one body; now we had to learn how to move without him.
On the bus that morning, I understood something I hadn’t during all the years of repetition: that leadership is a kind of parenthood. You spend yourself teaching others what you hope will outlast you. Phillips’ steadiness didn’t ride with us, but it lived in every small act of composure we managed after he was gone - in the way we checked each other’s gear, in the quiet we kept when the world went loud again.
There’s no medal for that sort of legacy. The Army counts missions, not silences. But I think of him often; standing there beside the idling buses, the engines burning white against the morning; and I realize that some men lead you farther by staying behind than by marching beside you. What we carried into combat was the discipline he built in us, the voice that taught us to find order inside fear. And that is what I mean when I say a good sergeant is never left behind.
GBS jr
Herkimer, NY
2010
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