War leaves marks that don’t always show, and slogans rarely hold the weight of what service members actually endure. In this poem, the question “How do we support our troops?” becomes more than a patriotic refrain- it becomes a reckoning. Written by someone who has lived the realities behind the uniform, this piece invites readers to look past the familiar phrase and into the quiet, complicated truths of survival, memory, and the cost of asking ordinary people to bear extraordinary burdens.
How Do We Support the Troops?
I see you
I see the reels that already play behind your eyes
or that will
the wonder
at your world suddenly on fire
wandering through your first moral maze.
“To Any Soldier,” the joke they say
cards written by school children as an exercise
“if you cared you would at least know my name.”
“If you cared, you would reach your hand through the miles
hold firm as I fight
that I feel your support
no care package baby wipes
you see me
my fight is your fight
I am not alone.”
I held firm to a hand once
I-will-never-let-you-go grip
you began to slip
I reached from my precarious position, two hands
slow slide
or maybe you let go
Support Our Troops.
I see you
as the temptation to crash and burn grows
I fight it with fire
protest in the singular, in the thousands
we call the names of your dead
even as silence is no answer for the living.
When you return we will see you
we will be there in the background waiting
as you try to get a life back on track
that pulled up stakes and left while you were gone.
Support our troops
they are ours
with the space of a watchful circle
we wait for you with new navigational tools
and cautious optimism
most of us make it
Let us help you remain in the land of the living.
Published with permission of author.
Fran Wiedenhoeft studied creative writing at Madison College. Her work can be found on warwriterscampaign.org, in the 2015 Ariel Anthology, Praxis Magazine Online, the American Journal of Nursing, the Spring 2020 issue of Deadly Writers Patrol, The Adelaide Review Literary Magazine, and Veteran Voices Magazine.
She was a finalist in poetry at the Adelaide Literary Magazine Award Contest 2024 and won the Pallas Athene Best Story award for “Glory.”
She completed a residency at Write On Door County in March 2021. Her poem “To Any Civilian” was published in “As You Were,” and nominated by Military Experience and the Arts for a Pushcart Prize.
She is a writer, poet, mother, and grandmother. She is also a twenty-two-year Army veteran who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Desert Storm.
She volunteers as a reader for the Gemini Review.