Sharik wrote a poem for her father, and Barbara McMurray Hyde read it in China in July when she and her sister went to Kunming for a ceremony honoring the fallen American soldiers – her father died during the Salween River (called Nujiang River in China) Campaign.

In Memory of my Father,

Capt. Robert H. Phillips,

CBI (China, Burma, India) Theater,

Bronze Star Recipient for the Salween River Gorge campaign

DEAR DAD

I wish that you could talk with me

and tell me where you’d been

when you were in old China

and fought at the Salween.

Up and down the River’s gorge

leading Chinese men

It must look so different now;

Would you go back again?

If I gave you a ticket

to places you were bloodied

would you go with me and show me?

Would your memories be muddied?

I’m trying to find the place you fought

in heat, and rain and mud;

when your uniform was sweat-stained

and your shirt was smudged with blood…

when you fought and killed an enemy

and brought his letters home;

Where you swore to never kill again

Where you felt so all alone.

I’ve found a picture of the steppes

along the Salween Gorge

Do all soldiers dream the way you did?

Were their hearts like iron forged?

If I went to China’s River now

and stood on her steep bank;

would I find a piece of your soul there?

Who would I have to thank

for the strange ways you reacted,

for all the nightmares that we shared;

for the man you hid from all of us

for the way you left us scared.

I wish I’d known the man you were

before you met the River

whose current carried you away

and that man was lost forever.

(China.org.cn September 19, 2005)