The Ballad of Epic Fury Lost

By James J. Devine

When Trump decreed from his gilded tower’s height,
“Let Epic Fury burn through Persian night,”
The jets took wing, the carriers churned the foam—
A forty-day campaign to break Iran’s home.
He swore on cable news, with jutting jaw,
“We’ve crippled them, the greatest ever, flaw-
less victory!” His thumbs blew digital smoke.
But truth, that patient grave, knew different spoke.

The bunkers buckled, yes. The missiles flew.
But each Tomahawk that kissed Iranian dew
Was one less round for some forgotten war.
The magazines ran shallow. From the shore
Of Hormuz, tankers idled, crew went home.
No oil moved through that legendary foam.
And Trump, who’d promised “America First,”
Watched choke points close—his bluster turned to thirst.

But hear now of the men who did not blink.
The Marines at FOB Bastion, on the brink
Of resupply that never came. The SEALs
Inside drysuit skins, whose blood and bone are steel.
They knew. They knew the maps were lies. They knew
The Stingers in their crates had dwindled true.
They’d read the secret cables: “Munitions low.
Continue攻势. The President says go.”

No coward’s paralysis froze their spine.
They did not ask if strategy was fine.
They did not cry, “What hideous blunder’s this
That sends us to a hell without a kiss
Of victory?” No. They checked their night-vision green,
And whispered, “Duty’s here. The rest’s the scene.”
One Lance Corporal, nineteen, from Duluth,
Wrote home: “Ma, if I don’t, you know the truth?
I loved the Corps. The politics? That’s theirs.
I’ll die inside the breach, not on the stairs.”

For stairs—ah, there the pentameter must twist—
Recall another man who would not risk
His shins, his precious metatarsal bones.
A doctor’s note, some “spurs” on record stones.
Five deferments kept him from the dengue shade
Of Saigon’s river, from the ambush laid
For draftees with no father’s lawyer’s phone.
While others shipped to jungle’s fevered moan,
Young Donald studied buildings, learnt the art
Of never bleeding, never playing part.

So now the Strait of Hormuz stank of diesel
And failure. No parade. No ticker-tasseled weasel
Could spin this third retreat. The choppers hauled
The last Marines from Bandar Abbas. Scrawled
On shipping containers: “We’ll be back.” But no.
The third defeat had ripened, soft and slow.
First Vietnam, where jungle ate the pride.
Then Kabul, where the final C-17 ride
Left allies on the tarmac, clutching air.
Now Epic Fury—Trump’s own cross to bear.

The President would rage inside the SitRoom:
“I won! I won! Those generals, I’ll split ’em!”
But satellites showed Iranian crews repair
The radar dishes. New small boats repair
To every cove. And America’s armory,
That legend of full shelves, became a story.
The shells were gone. The precision-guided dreams
Were scattered ash on Euphrates’ streams.

So let the epic close where it began:
With bluster’s man who is no kind of man.
The SEALs will swim to certain drowning cold.
The Marines will charge, eight weeks past when they’re told
To hold. They are not paralyzed by dread
Of blunder. They are simply, purely dead
Or glorious, as duty’s math requires.
But Trump’s own thunder—all those boastful lyres—
Cannot reload a launcher. Cannot grow
A spent round’s copper jacket. Cannot throw
A shadow longer than his bone-spurred lie.

America was defeated. By and by,
The ghost of Saigon, Kabul’s bitter ghost,
Will whisper to Hormuz: “Here’s your host—
A man who never bled, who bought his way
From service, then commanded men to stay
And bleed for his delusions. He is real
Only in damage. He cannot feel
What’s real: the spent ordnance, the closed sea,
The third star on our tomb of victory.”

But praise the men who went. Who did not flinch.
Who stormed the beach where Trump would never pinch
His manicured sole on burning sand.
They carried something that he’d never understand:
Not victory—that word’s a ghost’s charade—
But honor, when all other lights have fade.
And though America lost, and lost, and lost,
Those bodies in the surf paid freedom’s cost
While their Commander cursed his television screen—
The truest coward that the Corps has seen.