By Wally Stephens

In preparation for this year’s Benicia Memorial Day ceremony, and in order to remember the real meaning of the holiday, I wrote this poem about an experience of mine from the Vietnam war:
 Silent Silver Boxes
 Bien Hoa 1968

Silent silver boxes
Neatly stacked up high
In countless rows and columns
As I, in awe, went slowly by

Gleaming in the tropic sun
A strange attraction they possessed
As one by one they gathered there
Until to duty each was pressed

Still without identity
Patiently each waited
Until such time to be deployed
For solemn task created

Suitable for great and small
Efficient in design
In numbers only estimated
On some form and on some line

Once filled with precious cargo
Of ended dreams and plans
Returned on silver freedom wings
To loved ones in the homelands

On and on the rows continued
I thought I heard a cry
Up and up the columns climbed
As I, in awe, went slowly by

Wally Stephens is the Memorial Day chair of the Benicia Historical Society

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