We came to provide help that you didn’t want.
We came to provide security you didn’t need.
We came to provide schools that you didn’t care about.
We came to provide a government that didn’t work.
We came to provide democracy you didn’t understand.
We came to provide infrastructure you wouldn’t take care of.
We came to provide a better life that you didn’t ask for.
And we kept spilling our blood and couldn’t understand how you could be so ungrateful.

Nathan Didier

Nate Didier was an US Army Infantry NCO with C. Co. 1-133rd INF, 2/34th BCT deployed to Kosovo from 2007-2008 and Nuristan Province, Afghanistan from 2010-2011. He resides in Cedar Falls, Iowa and enjoys the outdoors, reading, and spending time with his children. He has a BA in History from the University of Northern Iowa and has previously been published in Culture Cult Press’ Spring Offensive: Poetry of Strife and Spring (2023) and the Right Hand Pointing’s The Law of Forgetting: Poems on Moral Injury (2023).