DAYS OF GREEN: 25 YEARS ON
(A Vet Remembers)
In middle-age I cast my mind
Back to the Days of Green;
And many say I must be blind...
Things weren't as they did seem!
" The War was wrong!" some tried to claim,
(Oh, it was wrong we didn't win !)
" Or did we?" We could ask again,
For, where the fuck is Ho Chi Minh?
He's dead! The God-like bearded dwarf,
An' so is his Social Order.
His Communism's broken forth
An' Capitalised his borders.
His heavy-handed politics,
His forced re-education,
His savage little terror tricks
Impoverished his Nation.
An' since we left in '75
They found it fit to cheer
The peaceful Peoples' Army's drive
To conquer Kampuchea.
They talked of reconstruction bills
An' claimed that we should pay,
While keeping Death Camps in the hills
To hold our M.I.A.
Then after Saigon's bloody fall
When Northern Reds swept in,
They tried to build a bamboo wall
To keep their people in.
So, if it was that bloody great,
This Peoples' Red Regime...
Why did so many dare escape
In endless southward stream?
Why did the boat-folks need so strong
To risk their lives an' bunk
To crowded refuge in Hong Kong
In flimsy, dangered junks.
A quarter century later on
They tens of thousands number;
They'd rather be in exile's throng
Than face Viet Nam's hunger.
But now in moral change around,
The Communists have turned
To welcome in the Franc and Pound
When once they would have spurned
As "decadent" these Western deals,
And Capitalistic quirks
That open up their off-shore fields
And provide the Comrades' perks.