Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
Stand-To for Night
Patrol
The
Americans were said to believe that the Communists are on the defensive…
-New
York Times, 11 January 1970
I keep seeing a boat’s black silhouette
Upon the red water, against the red sky
And the black-death tree-line along the shore
A dark, decaying scene, and I don’t know why
Lawrence Hall, HSG
It Wasn’t the Fourth of July
That we may wander
o’er this bloody field
To book our dead,
and then to bury them
-Henry V IV.vii.75-76
It wasn’t the fourth of
July, but it was about then
Near the Cambodian border,
on the Vam Co Tay
Searching for two American
airman whose machine had gone down
Down, down into the
steaming green Vam Co Tay
Bloated and floating,
quite still when we saw them
The sloshy prop wash
bumped them about a bit
Empty eye sockets, mouths
open in silent screams
We poncho-linered their
bodies aboard the boat
Cigarettes of despair
against the stench and rot
This was not what we sang
about in school
