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Some volunteered, some were conscripted/ Some strode off, knowing they could beat the world/ Some were filled with trepidation from that fateful premonition/ Some were great patriots who embraced the founding ideal/ Some were fresh off the boat and had no idea what we were fighting for/ But they went anyway/ Think of what they could have done and seen/ Had they been allowed to play out the string/ Their future generations that never were/ The achievements becoming great accomplishments never made/ How they would have loved to live past Armistice Day/ In trenches, in forests, in fields, in oceans- lost to the sea/ In jungles and mountains and deserts of later struggles/ They fell in ones, and tens, and stacked like cord wood/ Did they pine for home as the were dying?/ Their love and loss that left us crying/ All those unrealized dreams/ Never tarnish their legacy and defend that spark of liberty that burned in their breasts and impelled them forward into the jaws of eternity.