The Ballad of: Brawling Mad dog Sergeant Rook

A bunch of us guys in the hut

In …Nam
Were playing cards, singing songs;
In a solo-room, back of the hut
Lay mad-dog, Sergeant Rook;

And watching from a distance
Was his sidekick, Corporal Cook.

When out of the night, he wanted

To fight
This bully of six-foot-two
Dog-drunk, smelling like a skunk

I wanted to fight him too.

He wobbled like a duck as I

Blocked his punch—

(for I was drunk too),
And I kicked him several times

I guess—
Yet he didn’t fall, as expected
This Sergeant I barely knew…

There was no man, could beat

This bear of a brut,
In our company, or there about
So I kicked him in the groin

Again—
And still he didn’t shout!

And such was I, as he looked

At me
Puzzled from brow to foot
He was a demon from hell I

Thought
This mad-dog Sergeant Rook.

With the face of bulldog

And a deadly stare
I swear he was three hundred

Pounds;
I twisted my body like a cobra
Jumped in the air like a bird

And when I came down
The blaze in his eyes were gone

This mad-dog Sergeant Rook!

I pierced my fingers into his flesh
Like nails and thorns—with

Ferociousness…
Then I moved from side to side

A bit
As he swayed like a tree in a storm
Clutching the side of the hut

I guess;
We both knew, we wanted no more.

In echoes he cursed insanities—

As his sidekick cheered him on
But for he and I, the game was

Over
It was back to war, in Vietnam!...

Note: 6998 5/31/05

Poet/Author Dennis Siluk, produces a ballad of Vietnam, an occurance, where more truth resides than fiction. The Author lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and Lima, Peru; and was a soldier in the Vietnam war