I went to a meeting.
They read a letter.
A member of the club
went to the American Cemetery
outside Manila to find
the grave of his uncle.
They found the grave
and wrote a letter
addressed to the club.
It told of a twenty-three
year old soldier in
World War Two,
captured on the Bataan
Peninsula and led on
the Death March without
food or water who died
of malaria in a concentration
camp and never came home
to Wisconsin. The family
brought home word half
a world and over half
a century later. The
old man who read
the letter almost wept
and the room fell silent
as everyone realized but
didn’t want to say
they feared despite
the sacrifice of a young
soldier named Sam
and all his comrades
in the swamps
and steaming jungles of
a place so far away,
that Uncle Sam has
died and his nation
lies beside him
in the grave.
♠