DOING A HITCH IN HELL

A poem by Reverend Waylon Williamson

Right off the Atlantic Ocean, Panama is the spot. Where we are doomed to spend our time, In the land that God forgot.

Down where there’s no Ten Commandments. And a man always has his thirst. We’re outcasts from civilization. Victims of life at it’s worst.

Down on this rum-soaked isthmus, we’re the men the Lord forgot. Out in the enchanted jungle, we itch with the tropical rot.

Living with the natives, down by the Sweltering Zone. Down by the man-made river, three thousand miles from home.

Holding onto memories, waiting to see our gals. Hoping that while we’re away, they haven’t married our pals.

Drenched with sweat in the evening, we sit on our beds and dream. Filling ourselves with liquor, to stop our memories supreme.

We lay at night on our pillow, with ills no doctor can cure. Hell, we’re not soldiers, just convicts on a foreign tour.

Nobody knows we are living, down here amongst the damned. Back home we are forgotten. We’re soldiers of Uncle Sam.

In Panama City or Cristobal, we squander our hard-earned pay. Raise hell one merry evening, and broke the very next day.

We’re soldiers by occupation, earning our meager pay. Guarding people with millions, for only two forty a day.

The time spent in the army, the things in life we missed. Boy, we hope the draft don’t get you, and for God’s sake don’t enlist.

But there is one consolation, each one of us know well. When we die we’ll go to heaven, for we’ve served our Hitch in Hell.

When we go to heaven, Saint Peter will repeat: “These boys are from Panama, they’ve suffered enough in the heat.”