WINCHESTER, Va. (WDVM-25) — Memorial Day is a twenty-four hour period to remember America'due south war and the sacrifices they made to proceed all of united states gratuitous.

Bud Ryan, an 88-year-old Korean State of war Veteran, put his thoughts down on paper in a poem called, "A Soldier Died Today."

"I remember when I was a immature GI, the stories I would tell.
"some about Guadalcanal, I went through a living hell."
"My comrades recall too when they sat around the post. Some remembered experiences they were known to repeat the most."
"When a combat soldier is sent to a country in conflict, he volition practise his part in lands far from home, protecting freedom in a war he didn't start."
"I hear people talking about me and pity the manner I look."
"If only they knew my experiences in life, they would write a book."
"On Iwo Jima, many would fall while belongings the line that twenty-four hour period."
"Information technology's equally though I was there only yesterday.
"The trauma of war never leaves you. Only a fellow vet will sympathize."
"Your mind filled with demons of war, returning from a war-torn land."
"Before the war, I enjoyed a wonderful life. I had a lovely wife."
"My dying won't be mourned by many as I think about my life."
"Simply a few seem to honor our heroes in a way of which they should."'
"As a homeless vet myself, I am scorned past my neighborhood."
"You know I could really intendance less most what is said as I continue my journeying of strife. I was amid the few protecting my country'due south liberty; offering up my life."
"The years of strife has taken its took now that I'chiliad getting quondam."
"I fear that I will die this winter somewhere out there in the bitter common cold."
"My country will not be mourning me. The headlines will not say he was a courageous hero. A soldier died today."

Pictured In a higher place: Bud Ryan

Bud served two gainsay tours aboard USS Eldorado. He was in the command and control ship during the Korean War. When Bud wasn't at battle stations backside his twenty-millimeter anti-aircraft gun, he was the ship's hairdresser.