Song for Jeffrey Lucey

By Meg Hutchinson

You were almost twenty-two when they shipped you out
With the sixth motor transport battalion
Operation Freedom, also known as the war
No place for a good kid just trying to pay for school.

Posted February 17, 2016

You would've made a great dad
If you'd lived that long
Your eyes are warm and kind on the evening news
There was a big celebration when you walked of that bus
With all your limbs intact we thought you'd made it back to us
And no one knew, what you'd been made to do over there
You were almost twenty-two when they shipped you out
With the sixth motor transport battalion
Operation Freedom, also known as the war
No place for a good kid just trying to pay for school
And no one knew, what you'd be made to do over there
Yellow ribbons still fluttering from the trees beside the house
Memory was a cancer that you could not live without
But you could not live with it
Oh... no you could not live with it
In the dark you held your flashlight, still listening for spiders
In the days you drank alone in your old room
Haunted always by the voices, by the jingling of the tags
Holding on to one little corner of that flag
And no one knew...
Yellow ribbons still fluttering from the trees beside the house
Made a pillow for your head and they laid you down
Oh they laid you down
Oh... oh they laid you down
And no one knew
What you'd been made to do
And all there love couldn't keep you