Email: rosserbm@vmi.edu
Name: Benjamin Rosser
Comments: My grandfather is Maj. Frank Murphy; he was in the 100th BG, 418th Squadron. He's been my guardian since I was 16 and now, a PFC in the US Army National Guard, at 20 years old, do I really understand what it means to be a soldier and an American. I wrote a poem I thought you all would like, it is about the 100th. I've written a lot of poetry and love to do so, I've won some awards but it's not about that - it's about the message. I hope you all will enjoy this work as much as I did writing it, I felt that in someway this is a tribute to all the brave souls who did not return, as well as for those who fought so many years ago above Europe.

Respectfully,
PFC Ben Rosser, 2-116th INF, 29TH ID(L)

Ode to the Bloody 100th

High above her coasts and shores,
The mighty thunder of a thousand engines’ roar.
Towards the sky and over the sea,
With guns bristling fore to aft they fly onward, the steel beasts.

Those poor young bastards, so brave were they all,
And when the Hun fighters came, many of them, too many, did fall.
They were her soldiers, loyal until the end,
They were the Bloody Hundredth, the noblest and finest of all men.

Pressing onward into the lion’s den did they ride,
Breaking the Hun’s mighty back, but so many did die.
The cost was mighty, the price was high,
But this was the cost, to preserve our way of life.

Some of her kin are now old and gray,
Telling the tales to their earnest grandchildren here today,
But others were not so lucky, and the price they did pay,
But they are not dead and buried, they aren’t lying in graves.

Look up child and you shall see with your own eyes,
A thousand white streamers rising over England’s blue skies.
And listen to the thunder of a thousand engines’ roar,
Ghosts of the Hundredth still guarding her shores.

-end-