I watched the flag pass by one day.
  It fluttered in the breeze
  A young Marine saluted it, and then
  He stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
   So young, so tall, so proud
  With hair cut square and eyes alert
   He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
   Had fallen through the years.
   How many died on foreign soil?
   How many mothers' tears?
   How many Pilots' planes shot down?
   How many foxholes were soliders' graves?
   No Freedom is not free
I heard the sound of taps one night,
   When everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play
   And felt a sudden chill.
       I wondered just how many times
            That taps had meant "Amen"
            When a flag had draped a coffin  
             a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
    Of the mothers and the wives, 
    Of fathers, sons and husbands
    With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard At the bottom of the sea
     Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
     No Freedom isn't free!!