Fuits, Burl - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

(Newspaper Clipping - probably Crawfordsville Journal Review)

To My Friends - As I left Saturday, Sept 25 for the US Navy, it was impossible for me to get around and see all of you.  I take this means to say goodbye, as I regret leaving everyone. I will try and express my feeling in a little poem I wrote several years ago.

In the last World War

  I was but a lad,

And at the station saw

  The heart-torn parents

Give up their pride and joy

To me it was a sad picture

  With me, it is still;

I would rather not be a soldier

  Who has to shoot and kill.

The engineer was signaled,

  The cars went rolling past;

For several mothers in that crowd

  It was forever the last caress

The platform of the rear coach was crowded

  With hand-waving men,

And I watched them vanish from my sight

  As they rounded the railroad bend.

If the war lords could have seen their sadness

  Rather than fire and fear;

All nations would live as brothers

  Throughout the eternal years.

Burl E. Fruits