Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Memorial Stadium [PAGE 22]

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Oh, who shall soon forget the shout, The song of triumphant joy, The wounded world's acclaim When the sons of Illinois And her valiant daughters came To buttress back the devastating flood !A buoyant singing brotherhood Of every hue and blood, A stalwart prairie legion Of every rank and region, From mill and mine and college walls. Out of our Alma Mater's cloistered halls, Ten thousand strong they marched, and flung A song their ancient sires had sung— Of the will that makes men free, Of world democracy: Soldier and sailor and marine, Lean grayhounds of the sea, Swift falcons overhead, And carriers of the wounded and the dead. Fair Belgium's ruins and the peaks of Italy Rang with the iron of their tread, With the click of the magazine, With the shriek of their molten lead; At St. Mihiel, Chateau Thierry, Verdun, And Argonne Woods, at last the frenzied Hun Succumbed to stinging steel And felt the prairie heel; And prairie crimson blots the shining green, Where scarlet poppies dance, Where a host of broken soldiers bled And stained the fields of France. Back to a land of peace our sons returned, A broken legion, a shattered singing throng: The bronzed, the hale, the strong, The blind, the halt, the burned, The shocked, the walking-dead, the lame— And some came back a shadow, and some came back a name.

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