Someone once said that hell is fire,
Suffering eternal torment in burning heat.
I’d like to contradict that liar,
Tell him what really has the soldiers beat.

Hell isn’t fire;
Hell is mud.
It makes my plight dire,
Makes my gun a dud.

In the mud there isn’t a side.
No enemy, no ranks, no cause.
Those people can’t have sent me here bona fide.
Not to die here in the mud’s jaws.

Drowning has always been my fear.
I almost drowned once when I was four.
I was dying, but the sun was still shining, the water was still clear.
I was saved, “I’ll never let it happen again,” my father swore.

Daddy’s not here to save me now.
He can’t see his son here splattered with gore,
So far away he can’t keep his vow.
Wading through the mud, thinking it’ll stop—but there’s always more.

I had to watch the sergeant drown the other day.
There was nothing I could do except watch his stripes sink.
Later we said some prayers over his poppy bouquet.
And that’s how men die; faster than the eye can blink.

By the time this is found,
I may very well be dead and gone.
Swallowed by mud without a sound.
I watched the sun rise above the trenches, believing this to be my last dawn.

I am a soldier who fought for the U.S.A.
I am a soldier who will never leave this place.
I am a soldier who died so that you could live another day.
I am a soldier who drowned in the mud; lost without a trace.