The loss of innocence

At a school sports day, I was running sixty metres,
I wanted so very much to win, didn't quite make it,
but got a bronze medal, which I bore on my lapel
with unseemly pride.
When joining the merchant navy, I wore it too; no one
had a medal like this. In bars, girls asked why I wore it,
they were not used to meet a real hero; I could not tell
them the mundane truth, but spun a story.
Alas, women want what a man has got, falling for her
charms I parted with the medal, my downfall,
never saw the medal again.