The Unknown Soldier's Son

by Roy Z Kemp
(Deceased, Buried in Greensboro, NC)

The Unknown Soldier's Son

Now quietly he lies, his job well done;
Now he is through with toil and ache and pain...
The fight he made, that justice might be won,
That love and charity might live again;
The sacrifice that he so gladly made,-
It will not be in vain! His son is grown,
Is through with all his childish things; has laid
Aside his boyish thoughts, and it is known
He now will step into his father's role.
Abiding faith is his, to carry on,
He, too, may pay the sacrificial toll,
But by the paying comes a brighter dawn.

Bright-eyed he goes, with sunlight on his face,
And victory is at the trysting place.

by Cpl. Roy Z Kemp, Greensboro, NC
Selected by the Poetry Society, London
for inclusion in Poems by Yanks in Britain, 1942-1945
London: The Daily Mail, 1945, p.27