Editor’s Note: It was eighty years ago this morning that the Japanese launched their aircraft to kill thousands of young sailors at the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. We did not know them as living citizens, but our pal RADM Donald “Mac” Showers reported aboard Station HYPO just two months after the attack. The big ships were still on the bottom of the harbor, and a generation later we passed the monument to those wo served on USS Arizona as a living ship. With living men who served aboard her still entombed. Remember them on this day, eighty years after a morning that must live in our memory.
– Vic
Sound the Trumpet
(In honor of Dec 7th, and the mission of the Watchmen)
“But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.”
Ezekiel 33:6
Many, many years ago, A quiet December morn,
Shattered by a mighty roar, our community was reborn.
Pearls of the Pacific, lush and green and warm,
Home to a mighty fleet, struck with no alarm.
A tremendous struggle, no quarter given,
Millions dead, many more lives riven.
We served in the shadow of that day, in the selfsame place,
Day and night we stood the watch, same harbor, same base.
A different foe, but the same task, to blow the trumpet,
When the sword come, to see it first, to name the threat.
’Twas not just a harbor, not just ships, we guarded the whole nation,
And more than that, for our time, we guarded a civilization.
More than two thousand dead, a constant reminder to us all,
Of what might happen if we failed, failed to make the trumpet call.
And weak minds and weak spirits means the ball might drop,
And if it does, it has real cost, not found while tending shop.
’Tis not an easy lesson, to understand what might lay ahead,
Failure has grim consequences, we can’t atone to the dead.
Western man was at risk, that was our task and mission,
Protect a people and their freedoms, that was our commission.
Continual vigilance, never rest, eyes forever open wide,
Always demanding our very best, no effort was denied.
We executed our task, though our best demanded some sacrifice,
We held true to those who came before, who paid the ultimate price.
Not so long ago we were the watchmen on that wall,
Ready to sound the trumpet, ready to make that call.
A demanding task, little room for error, we met the task,
Western man was kept safe, that was all that we could ask.
For now that is enough, we earned our basic pay,
Hold your heads up high, when the horn sounds on Judgment Day.