We’re doing right by them,
knocking down little men from big seats,
freeing innocents from the scare,
and saving ourselves from it too.
We’d be the heroes of the century!
That's what we thought at least.

We boarded the planes with great energy,
skipping past the goodbye tears from mom and dad.
A hug and a kiss would do,
anything else would just waste our diminishing time.

We crawled around in exotic greens
day in and day out,
ripping through tiny straw towns
trying to find them,
smothering the rest with an orange blanket.
Heartbreaking, truly, but
harsh orders still had to be followed.

We returned to a cold shoulder-
some of us did anyway.
A great split running down the middle
of our troubled paradise.
While we were off chasing eastern comrades,
the real threat seeped
into the tv screens of every first-world household.

Overseas
or at home,
we were the ugly.