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The Soldier's Wife

When she was a girl, her dreams were bold, as bold as her fine, free gaze;
And every gift of grace and mind was hers in her younger days.
When she was a girl, a golden girl, with a soul as fine as fire.
She could outshine the brightest jewel that a rich man's love might buy her.
Yes hers could have been the glittering path through a careless, carefree life,
But she fell in love with a soldier, so she became a soldier's wife.

Away from the home of her childhood she marched at her husband's side,
For she chose a wide and winding road when she became a bride. And somtimes the road was a hard one, so different from what she had planned;
And sometimes she wept for the home she had left as she lay in a foreign land;
And sometimes her steps would grow weary as she followed the drum and the fife;
But she set about making the world her home because she was a soldier's wife.

She learned to build a hearth for them wherever her man was sent;
And she knelt to plant a garden every time he pitched their tent.
Yes, she always planted a garden though she never saw it grow,
For she knew before the flowers came that she would have to go.
But she left each garden gladly though it cut her like a knife,
For she hoped it might bring some comfort to another soldier's wife.

To the hardships in her married life she brought one simple truth,
A promise that once was spoken in the ancient words of Ruth:
"Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
They people shall be my people and thy God shall be my God."
She shared his joys and sorrows as they made their way through life,
For she was proud to love a soldier and to be a soldier's wife.

She bore the weight of worrying what fate might hold in store;
And the wordless fear of waiting when her soldier went to war;
And the nights that she spent fearing that her waiting was in vain;
And the pain of wanting someone she might never hold again.
But she bore his children gladly through uncertainty and strife,
And they never heard her crying for she was a soldier's wife.

She raised a soldier's family with the faith her love had taught her;
And she gave the pride she had inside to her son and to her daughter;
And she taught them to love freedom and to know what it was worth,
As they helped her plant her gardens in the corners of the earth.
And she never wished for better than the road they marched through life,
Because she was as much soldier as she was a soldier's wife.

*by Caroline Franklin Berry *

Congratulations on your new grandson! Thank you for the poem also. My wife comes from a line of military wives. I hope that you won’t mind if we share it with others. We have frequent contact with Family Readiness Groups.

Reading over my posts to you... I would have been offended to. Sometimes I peck out things without considering other people’s feelings and I am sorry.

Good luck with your medical business today. There is not a lot that I dislike more than going to the doctor. I actually almost died from not getting a ruptured appendix treated until a week after it had ruptured and I had developed an infection. My wife told me that if I didn’t go to the hospital she was going to kill me herself.