A Package for Hitler

The drill sergeant says it's a package for Hitler.  Let that crummy mustache have it, he yells.  Do it like you mean it you sorry excuse for a soldier.  Do you want to win this war or not? Because your face shows weakness and fear and when they see it they'll cut you up in a million pieces that even your mother won't recognize.  Hesitate and they'll blow your legs off so fast you won't even know it.  They want to kill you.  Is that you want?  Is that the face of a killer or a wimp? If you don't throw it like it's important they will.  Do you think they give a rat's ass your father is counting on you to come home and take over the family farm?  They do not! They have a firing squad waiting for them if they don't get their quota of Americans.  So you have two seconds to pull that ring and throw it down that German bastard's throat.  Do you hear what I'm saying?  If you don't I'll hit you so far down into the ground you won't even be able to smell your socks.  Now throw that thing, private, throw it like it's the goddamn end of the world and there's just that one last Jew hater left who is determined to kill you first so he can eat strudel tonight and laugh at your dead body.  He'll pull your guts out and use it to make sausages to feed their orphans.  Now throw it like you actually give a shit or you'll be running 20 miles tonight in the rain.  I swear!  Throw that thing into Satan's eye and let's go home.

© Poem Fix http://www.poemfix.com 2012
Image: Alfred T. Palmer, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection, LC-D4-13088