EveningStar
05-23-2003, 03:46 PM
Here are three items for Memorial Day.
General MacArthur's Thayer Award Speech -- Duty, Honor, Country (1962)
http://www.conservababes.co m/pics/douglaswestpointsteu ckex.jpg
Full size image (http://www.americanrhetoric .com/images/douglaswestpointsteu cke.jpg)
General Westmoreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this. Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always: Duty, *Honor, Country.
Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean. The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give.
He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written in red on his enemy's breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.
As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of *God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death.
They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.
Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.
And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stercorarious war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of: Duty, Honor, Country.
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.
The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice.
In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.
However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.
We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.
And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.
Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment. But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, *the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be: Duty, Honor, Country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.
This does not mean that you are war mongers.
On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.
Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.
I bid you farewell.
---
The address by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy in accepting the Sylvanus Thayer Award on 12 May 1962 is a memorable tribute to the ideals that inspired that great American soldier. For as long as other Americans serve their country as courageously and honorably as he did, General MacArthur's words will live on.
General MacArthur's service to his country spanned the years from 1903, when he was graduated from the Military Academy, to 5 April 1964, when he died in Washington, D.C., at the age of 84. He was recognized early in his career as a brilliant officer and was advanced to brigadier general in 1918. Twelve years later he was named Chief of Staff of the Army, and in *1937 he retired. Recalled to active duty during World War II, he was commander of the Southwest Pacific Area during the greater part of the *war. His wartime triumphs were followed by service as supreme commander of the Allied occupation forces in Japan. When the Korean conflict erupted, he also commanded the United Nations forces in Korea. He completed his active military service in 1951.
Before being laid to rest in Norfolk, Va., General MacArthur's body lay in state in New York City and in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, while a grateful Nation paid its tribute in sorrow.
---
Source (speech) (http://www.americanrhetoric .com/speeches/douglasmacarthurthay eraward.html)
Source (preface) (http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/au-24/au24-352mac.htm)
Audio (mp3 format) of speech (http://www.uttyler.edu/meidenmuller/mp3clips/AudioSpeeches/dmacarthurthayerawar d.mp3)
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FROM THE OTHER SIDE
http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/SGTFATS/images/reflections.jpg
At first there was no place for us to go until someone put up that "Black Granite Wall." Now, everyday and night, my Brothers and my Sisters wait to see the many people from places afar file in front of this "Wall." Many stopping briefly and many for hours and some that come on a regular basis. It was hard at first, not that it's gotten any easier, but it seems that many of the attitudes towards that Vietnam war we were involved in have changed. I can only pray that the ones on the other side have learn something, and more "Walls" as this one, needn't be built.
Several members of my unit, and many that I did not recognize, have called me to The Wall by touching my name engraved upon it. The tears aren't necessary, but are hard even for me to hold back. Don't feel guilty for not being with me, my Brothers. This was my destiny as it is yours, to be on that side of The Wall. Touch The Wall, my Brothers, so that we can share in the memories that we had. I have learn to put the bad memories aside and remember only the pleasant times that we had together. Tell our other Brothers out there to come and visit me, not to say Goodbye but to say Hello and be together again . . . even for a short time . . . and to ease that pain of loss that we all still share.
Today, an irresistible and loving call summons me to The Wall. As I approach, I can see an elderly lady . . . and as I get closer, I recognize her...It's Momma! As much as I have looked forward to this day, I have also dreaded it, because I didn't know what reaction I would have.
Next to her, I suddenly see my wife and immediately think how hard it must have been for her to come to this place, and my mind floods with the pleasant memories of 30 years past. There's a young man in a military uniform standing with his arm around her...My God!...he has to be my son! Look at him trying to be the man without a tear in his eye. I yearn to tell him how proud I am, seeing him standing tall, straight and proud in his uniform.
Momma comes closer and touches The Wall, and I feel the soft and gentle touch I had not felt in so many years. Dad has crossed to this side of The Wall, and through our touch, I try to convey to her that Dad is doing fine and is no longer suffering or feeling pain. I see my wife's courage building as she sees Momma touch The Wall and she approaches and lays her hand on my waiting hand. All the emotions, feelings and memories of three decades past flash between our touch and I tell her that. . .it's alright . . . carry on with your life and don't worry about me . . . .
I can see as I look into her eyes that she hears and a big burden has been lifted from her on wings of understanding.
I watch as they lay flowers and other memories of my past. My lucky charm that was taken from me and sent to her by my CO . . . a tattered and worn teddy bear that I can barely remember having as I grew up as a child. . . and several medals that I had earned and were presented to my wife. One is the Combat Infantry Badge that I am very proud of, and I notice that my son is also wearing this medal. I had earned mine in the jungles of Vietnam and he had probably earned his in the deserts of Iraq.
I can tell that they are preparing to leave, and I try to take a mental picture of them together, because I don't know when I will see them again. I wouldn't blame them if they were not to return, and can only thank them that I was not forgotten. My wife and Momma near The Wall for one final touch, and so many years of indecision fear and sorrow are let go. As they turn to leave, I feel my tears that had not flowed for so many years, form as if dew drops on the other side of The Wall.
They slowly move away with only a glance over their shoulders. My son suddenly stops and slowly returns. He stands straight and proud in front of me and snaps a salute. Something draws him near The Wall and he puts his hand upon etched stone and touches my tears that had formed dew drops on the face of The Wall . . . and I can tell that he senses my presence and the pride and love I have for him. He falls to his knees and the tears flow from his eyes and I try my best to reassure him that it's alright, and the tears do not make him less of a man. As he moves back wiping the tears from his eyes,he silently mouths,"God Bless you, Dad...."
God Bless, YOU, Son . . . we WILL meet someday, but in the meanwhile, go on your way . . . there is no hurry . . . there is no hurry at all.
As I see them walk off in the distance, I yell out to THEM and EVERYONE there today, as loud as I can:
THANKS FOR REMEMBERING!
. . . and as others on this side of The Wall join in, I notice that the U.S. Flag, Old Glory, that so proudly flies in front of us everyday, is flapping and standing proudly straight out in the wind from our gathering numbers this day . . .
and we shout again,
and . . . again,
and again . . .
T H A N K S F O R R E M E M B E R I N G!
T H A N K S FOR R E M E M B E R I N G!
T H A N K S FOR REMEMBERING!
THANKS F O R REMEMBERING!
THANKS FOR REMEMBERING!
---
From The Other Side . . .
Thanks For Remembering . . .
by: Patrick Camunes,
1998
Many things are written about The Wall, but never anything of being on the other side. I was inspired by the famous painting by Lee Teter, Reflections, and by Don Poss' recent Autumn's Wall. For me, and I hope for you, Reflections, and Autumn's Wall, revealed the Wall's emotion and healing power. Now remember that walk we all began in Vietnam, and know that it will be completed . . .
APVNV Pat (Beanie) Camunes (email: patcam@stic.net)
D/4/31 196th Lt. Inf. Bde
Tay Ninh 12/66-4/67 Tam Ky 4/67-12/67
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Forbes.com (http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/1002/112.html)
October 2, 2000
My Heart's Content
By Pat Conroy
http://surfsc.com/scbooks/images/conroy.jpg
The true things always ambush me on the road and take me by surprise when I am drifting down the light of placid days, careless about flanks and rearguard actions. *I was not looking for a true thing to come upon me in the state of New Jersey. *Nothing has ever happened to me in New Jersey. *But came it did, and it came to stay.
In the past four years I have been interviewing my teammates on the 1966-67 basketball team at the Citadel for a book I'm writing. *For the most part, this has been like buying back a part of my past that I had mislaid or shut out of my life. *At first I thought I was writing about being young and frisky and able to run up and down a court all day long, but lately I realized I came to this book because I needed to come to grips with being middle-aged and having ripened into a gray-haired man you could not trust to handle the ball on a fast break.
When I visited my old teammate Al Kroboth's house in New Jersey, I spent the first hours quizzing him about his memories of games and practices and the screams of coaches that had echoed in field houses more than 30 years before. *Al had been a splendid forward-center for the Citadel; at 6 feet 5 inches and carrying 220 pounds, he played with indefatigable energy and enthusiasm. *For most of his senior year, he led the nation in field-goal percentage, with UCLA center Lew Alcindor hot on his trail. *Al was a battler and a brawler and a scrapper from the day he first stepped in as a Green Weenie as a sophomore to the day he graduated. *After we talked basketball, we came to a subject I dreaded to bring up with Al, but which lay between us and would not lie still.
"Al, you know I was a draft dodger and antiwar demonstrator."
"That's what I heard, Conroy," Al said. *"I have nothing against what you did, but I did what I thought was right."
"Tell me about Vietnam, big Al. Tell me what happened to you," I said.
On his seventh mission as a navigator in an A-6 for Major Leonard Robertson, Al was getting ready to deliver their payload when the fighter-bomber was hit by enemy fire. *Though Al has no memory of it, he punched out somewhere in the middle of the ill-fated dive and lost consciousness. *He doesn't know if he was unconscious for six hours or six days, nor does he know what happened to Major Robertson (whose name is engraved on the Wall in Washington and on the MIA bracelet Al wears).
When Al awoke, he couldn't move. *A Viet Cong soldier held an AK-47 to his head. *His back and his neck were broken, and he had shattered his left scapula in the fall. *When he was well enough to get to his feet (he still can't recall how much time had passed), two armed Viet Cong led Al from the jungles of South Vietnam to a prison in Hanoi. *The journey took three months. *Al Kroboth walked barefooted through the most impassable terrain in Vietnam, and he did it sometimes in the dead of night. *He bathed when it rained, and he slept in bomb craters with his two Viet Cong captors. *As they moved farther north, infections began to erupt on his body, and his legs were covered with leeches picked up while crossing the rice paddies.
At the very time of Al's walk, I had a small role in organizing the only antiwar demonstration ever held in Beaufort, South Carolina, the home of Parris Island and the Marine Corps Air Station. *In a Marine Corps town at that time, it was difficult to come up with a quorum of people who had even minor disagreements about the Vietnam War. *But my small group managed to attract a crowd of about 150 to Beaufort's waterfront. *With my mother and my wife on either side of me, we listened to the featured speaker, Dr. Howard Levy, suggest to the very few young enlisted marines present that if they get sent to Vietnam, here's how they can help end this war: Roll a grenade under your officer's bunk when he's asleep in his tent. *It's called fragging and is becoming more and more popular with the ground troops who know this war is bullpoopy. *I was enraged by the suggestion. *At that very moment my father, a marine officer, was asleep in Vietnam. *But in 1972, at the age of 27, I thought I was serving America's interests by pointing out what massive flaws and miscalculations and corruptions had led her to conduct a ground war in Southeast Asia.
In the meantime, Al and his captors had finally arrived in the North, and the Viet Cong traded him to North Vietnamese soldiers for the final leg of the trip to Hanoi. *Many times when they stopped to rest for the night, the local villagers tried to kill him. *His captors wired his hands behind his back at night, so he trained himself to sleep in the center of huts when the villagers began sticking knives and bayonets into the thin walls. *Following the U.S. air raids, old women would come into the huts to excrete on him and yank out hunks of his hair. *After the nightmare journey of his walk north, Al was relieved when his guards finally delivered him to the POW camp in Hanoi and the cell door locked behind him.
It was at the camp that Al began to die. *He threw up every meal he ate and before long was misidentified as the oldest American soldier in the prison because his appearance was so gaunt and skeletal. *But the extraordinary camaraderie among fellow prisoners that sprang up in all the POW camps caught fire in Al, and did so in time to save his life.
When I was demonstrating in America against Nixon and the Christmas bombings in Hanoi, Al and his fellow prisoners were holding hands under the full fury of those bombings, singing "God Bless America.” *It was those bombs that convinced Hanoi they would do well to release the American POWs, including my college teammate. *When he told me about the C-141 landing in Hanoi to pick up the prisoners, Al said he felt no emotion, none at all, until he saw the giant American flag painted on the plane's tail. *I stopped writing as Al wept over the memory of that flag on that plane, on that morning, during that time in the life of America.
It was that same long night, after listening to Al's story, that I began to make judgments about how I had conducted myself during the Vietnam War. *In the darkness of the sleeping Kroboth household, lying in the third-floor guest bedroom, I began to assess my role as a citizen in the '60s, when my country called my name and I shot her the bird. *Unlike the stupid boys who wrapped themselves in Viet Cong flags and burned the American one, I knew how to demonstrate against the war without flirting with treason or astonishingly bad taste. *I had come directly from the warrior culture of this country and I knew how to act. *But in the 25 years that have passed since South Vietnam fell, I have immersed myself in the study of totalitarianism during the unspeakable century we just left behind. *I have questioned survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, talked to Italians who told me tales of the Nazi occupation, French partisans who had counted German tanks in the forests of Normandy, and officers who survived the Bataan Death March. *I quiz journalists returning from wars in Bosnia, the Sudan, the Congo, Angola, Indonesia, Guatemala, San Salvador, Chile, Northern Ireland, Algeria. *As I lay sleepless, I realized I'd done all this research to better understand my country. *I now revere words like democracy, freedom, the right to vote, and the grandeur of the extraordinary vision of the founding fathers. *Do I see America's flaws? *Of course. *But I now can honor her basic, incorruptible virtues, the ones that let me walk the streets screaming my a** off that my country had no idea what it was doing in South Vietnam. *My country let me scream to my heart's content--the same country that produced both Al Kroboth and me.
Now, at this moment in New Jersey, I come to a conclusion about my actions as a young man when Vietnam was a dirty word to me. *I wish I'd led a platoon of marines in Vietnam. *I would like to think I would have trained my troops well and that the Viet Cong would have had their hands full if they entered a firefight with us. *From the day of my birth, I was programmed to enter the Marine Corps. *I was the son of a marine fighter pilot, and I had grown up on marine bases where I had watched the men of the corps perform simulated war games in the forests of my childhood. *That a novelist and poet bloomed darkly in the house of Santini strikes me as a remarkable irony. *My mother and father had raised me to be an Al Kroboth, and during the Vietnam era they watched in horror as I metamorphosed into another breed of fanatic entirely. *I understand now that I should have protested the war after my return from Vietnam, after I had done my duty for my country. *I have come to a conclusion about my country that I knew then in my bones but lacked the courage to act on: America is good enough to die for even when she is wrong.
I looked for some conclusion, a summation of this trip to my teammate's house. *I wanted to come to the single right thing, a true thing that I may not like but that I could live with. *After hearing Al Kroboth's story of his walk across Vietnam and his brutal imprisonment in the North, I found myself passing harrowing, remorseless judgment on myself. *I had not turned out to be the man I had once envisioned myself to be. *I thought I would be the kind of man that America could point to and say, "There. *That's the guy. *That's the one who got it right. *The whole package. *The one I can depend on.” *It had never once occurred to me that I would find myself in the position I did on that night in Al Kroboth's house in Roselle, New Jersey: an American coward spending the night with an American hero.
---
Pat Conroy's novels include The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and Beach Music. *He lives on Fripp Island, South Carolina. *This essay is from his book, My Losing Season.
General MacArthur's Thayer Award Speech -- Duty, Honor, Country (1962)
http://www.conservababes.co m/pics/douglaswestpointsteu ckex.jpg
Full size image (http://www.americanrhetoric .com/images/douglaswestpointsteu cke.jpg)
General Westmoreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this. Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always: Duty, *Honor, Country.
Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean. The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give.
He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written in red on his enemy's breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.
As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of *God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death.
They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.
Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.
And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stercorarious war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of: Duty, Honor, Country.
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.
The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice.
In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.
However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.
We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.
And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.
Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment. But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, *the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be: Duty, Honor, Country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.
This does not mean that you are war mongers.
On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.
Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.
I bid you farewell.
---
The address by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy in accepting the Sylvanus Thayer Award on 12 May 1962 is a memorable tribute to the ideals that inspired that great American soldier. For as long as other Americans serve their country as courageously and honorably as he did, General MacArthur's words will live on.
General MacArthur's service to his country spanned the years from 1903, when he was graduated from the Military Academy, to 5 April 1964, when he died in Washington, D.C., at the age of 84. He was recognized early in his career as a brilliant officer and was advanced to brigadier general in 1918. Twelve years later he was named Chief of Staff of the Army, and in *1937 he retired. Recalled to active duty during World War II, he was commander of the Southwest Pacific Area during the greater part of the *war. His wartime triumphs were followed by service as supreme commander of the Allied occupation forces in Japan. When the Korean conflict erupted, he also commanded the United Nations forces in Korea. He completed his active military service in 1951.
Before being laid to rest in Norfolk, Va., General MacArthur's body lay in state in New York City and in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, while a grateful Nation paid its tribute in sorrow.
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Source (speech) (http://www.americanrhetoric .com/speeches/douglasmacarthurthay eraward.html)
Source (preface) (http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/au-24/au24-352mac.htm)
Audio (mp3 format) of speech (http://www.uttyler.edu/meidenmuller/mp3clips/AudioSpeeches/dmacarthurthayerawar d.mp3)
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FROM THE OTHER SIDE
http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/SGTFATS/images/reflections.jpg
At first there was no place for us to go until someone put up that "Black Granite Wall." Now, everyday and night, my Brothers and my Sisters wait to see the many people from places afar file in front of this "Wall." Many stopping briefly and many for hours and some that come on a regular basis. It was hard at first, not that it's gotten any easier, but it seems that many of the attitudes towards that Vietnam war we were involved in have changed. I can only pray that the ones on the other side have learn something, and more "Walls" as this one, needn't be built.
Several members of my unit, and many that I did not recognize, have called me to The Wall by touching my name engraved upon it. The tears aren't necessary, but are hard even for me to hold back. Don't feel guilty for not being with me, my Brothers. This was my destiny as it is yours, to be on that side of The Wall. Touch The Wall, my Brothers, so that we can share in the memories that we had. I have learn to put the bad memories aside and remember only the pleasant times that we had together. Tell our other Brothers out there to come and visit me, not to say Goodbye but to say Hello and be together again . . . even for a short time . . . and to ease that pain of loss that we all still share.
Today, an irresistible and loving call summons me to The Wall. As I approach, I can see an elderly lady . . . and as I get closer, I recognize her...It's Momma! As much as I have looked forward to this day, I have also dreaded it, because I didn't know what reaction I would have.
Next to her, I suddenly see my wife and immediately think how hard it must have been for her to come to this place, and my mind floods with the pleasant memories of 30 years past. There's a young man in a military uniform standing with his arm around her...My God!...he has to be my son! Look at him trying to be the man without a tear in his eye. I yearn to tell him how proud I am, seeing him standing tall, straight and proud in his uniform.
Momma comes closer and touches The Wall, and I feel the soft and gentle touch I had not felt in so many years. Dad has crossed to this side of The Wall, and through our touch, I try to convey to her that Dad is doing fine and is no longer suffering or feeling pain. I see my wife's courage building as she sees Momma touch The Wall and she approaches and lays her hand on my waiting hand. All the emotions, feelings and memories of three decades past flash between our touch and I tell her that. . .it's alright . . . carry on with your life and don't worry about me . . . .
I can see as I look into her eyes that she hears and a big burden has been lifted from her on wings of understanding.
I watch as they lay flowers and other memories of my past. My lucky charm that was taken from me and sent to her by my CO . . . a tattered and worn teddy bear that I can barely remember having as I grew up as a child. . . and several medals that I had earned and were presented to my wife. One is the Combat Infantry Badge that I am very proud of, and I notice that my son is also wearing this medal. I had earned mine in the jungles of Vietnam and he had probably earned his in the deserts of Iraq.
I can tell that they are preparing to leave, and I try to take a mental picture of them together, because I don't know when I will see them again. I wouldn't blame them if they were not to return, and can only thank them that I was not forgotten. My wife and Momma near The Wall for one final touch, and so many years of indecision fear and sorrow are let go. As they turn to leave, I feel my tears that had not flowed for so many years, form as if dew drops on the other side of The Wall.
They slowly move away with only a glance over their shoulders. My son suddenly stops and slowly returns. He stands straight and proud in front of me and snaps a salute. Something draws him near The Wall and he puts his hand upon etched stone and touches my tears that had formed dew drops on the face of The Wall . . . and I can tell that he senses my presence and the pride and love I have for him. He falls to his knees and the tears flow from his eyes and I try my best to reassure him that it's alright, and the tears do not make him less of a man. As he moves back wiping the tears from his eyes,he silently mouths,"God Bless you, Dad...."
God Bless, YOU, Son . . . we WILL meet someday, but in the meanwhile, go on your way . . . there is no hurry . . . there is no hurry at all.
As I see them walk off in the distance, I yell out to THEM and EVERYONE there today, as loud as I can:
THANKS FOR REMEMBERING!
. . . and as others on this side of The Wall join in, I notice that the U.S. Flag, Old Glory, that so proudly flies in front of us everyday, is flapping and standing proudly straight out in the wind from our gathering numbers this day . . .
and we shout again,
and . . . again,
and again . . .
T H A N K S F O R R E M E M B E R I N G!
T H A N K S FOR R E M E M B E R I N G!
T H A N K S FOR REMEMBERING!
THANKS F O R REMEMBERING!
THANKS FOR REMEMBERING!
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From The Other Side . . .
Thanks For Remembering . . .
by: Patrick Camunes,
1998
Many things are written about The Wall, but never anything of being on the other side. I was inspired by the famous painting by Lee Teter, Reflections, and by Don Poss' recent Autumn's Wall. For me, and I hope for you, Reflections, and Autumn's Wall, revealed the Wall's emotion and healing power. Now remember that walk we all began in Vietnam, and know that it will be completed . . .
APVNV Pat (Beanie) Camunes (email: patcam@stic.net)
D/4/31 196th Lt. Inf. Bde
Tay Ninh 12/66-4/67 Tam Ky 4/67-12/67
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Forbes.com (http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/1002/112.html)
October 2, 2000
My Heart's Content
By Pat Conroy
http://surfsc.com/scbooks/images/conroy.jpg
The true things always ambush me on the road and take me by surprise when I am drifting down the light of placid days, careless about flanks and rearguard actions. *I was not looking for a true thing to come upon me in the state of New Jersey. *Nothing has ever happened to me in New Jersey. *But came it did, and it came to stay.
In the past four years I have been interviewing my teammates on the 1966-67 basketball team at the Citadel for a book I'm writing. *For the most part, this has been like buying back a part of my past that I had mislaid or shut out of my life. *At first I thought I was writing about being young and frisky and able to run up and down a court all day long, but lately I realized I came to this book because I needed to come to grips with being middle-aged and having ripened into a gray-haired man you could not trust to handle the ball on a fast break.
When I visited my old teammate Al Kroboth's house in New Jersey, I spent the first hours quizzing him about his memories of games and practices and the screams of coaches that had echoed in field houses more than 30 years before. *Al had been a splendid forward-center for the Citadel; at 6 feet 5 inches and carrying 220 pounds, he played with indefatigable energy and enthusiasm. *For most of his senior year, he led the nation in field-goal percentage, with UCLA center Lew Alcindor hot on his trail. *Al was a battler and a brawler and a scrapper from the day he first stepped in as a Green Weenie as a sophomore to the day he graduated. *After we talked basketball, we came to a subject I dreaded to bring up with Al, but which lay between us and would not lie still.
"Al, you know I was a draft dodger and antiwar demonstrator."
"That's what I heard, Conroy," Al said. *"I have nothing against what you did, but I did what I thought was right."
"Tell me about Vietnam, big Al. Tell me what happened to you," I said.
On his seventh mission as a navigator in an A-6 for Major Leonard Robertson, Al was getting ready to deliver their payload when the fighter-bomber was hit by enemy fire. *Though Al has no memory of it, he punched out somewhere in the middle of the ill-fated dive and lost consciousness. *He doesn't know if he was unconscious for six hours or six days, nor does he know what happened to Major Robertson (whose name is engraved on the Wall in Washington and on the MIA bracelet Al wears).
When Al awoke, he couldn't move. *A Viet Cong soldier held an AK-47 to his head. *His back and his neck were broken, and he had shattered his left scapula in the fall. *When he was well enough to get to his feet (he still can't recall how much time had passed), two armed Viet Cong led Al from the jungles of South Vietnam to a prison in Hanoi. *The journey took three months. *Al Kroboth walked barefooted through the most impassable terrain in Vietnam, and he did it sometimes in the dead of night. *He bathed when it rained, and he slept in bomb craters with his two Viet Cong captors. *As they moved farther north, infections began to erupt on his body, and his legs were covered with leeches picked up while crossing the rice paddies.
At the very time of Al's walk, I had a small role in organizing the only antiwar demonstration ever held in Beaufort, South Carolina, the home of Parris Island and the Marine Corps Air Station. *In a Marine Corps town at that time, it was difficult to come up with a quorum of people who had even minor disagreements about the Vietnam War. *But my small group managed to attract a crowd of about 150 to Beaufort's waterfront. *With my mother and my wife on either side of me, we listened to the featured speaker, Dr. Howard Levy, suggest to the very few young enlisted marines present that if they get sent to Vietnam, here's how they can help end this war: Roll a grenade under your officer's bunk when he's asleep in his tent. *It's called fragging and is becoming more and more popular with the ground troops who know this war is bullpoopy. *I was enraged by the suggestion. *At that very moment my father, a marine officer, was asleep in Vietnam. *But in 1972, at the age of 27, I thought I was serving America's interests by pointing out what massive flaws and miscalculations and corruptions had led her to conduct a ground war in Southeast Asia.
In the meantime, Al and his captors had finally arrived in the North, and the Viet Cong traded him to North Vietnamese soldiers for the final leg of the trip to Hanoi. *Many times when they stopped to rest for the night, the local villagers tried to kill him. *His captors wired his hands behind his back at night, so he trained himself to sleep in the center of huts when the villagers began sticking knives and bayonets into the thin walls. *Following the U.S. air raids, old women would come into the huts to excrete on him and yank out hunks of his hair. *After the nightmare journey of his walk north, Al was relieved when his guards finally delivered him to the POW camp in Hanoi and the cell door locked behind him.
It was at the camp that Al began to die. *He threw up every meal he ate and before long was misidentified as the oldest American soldier in the prison because his appearance was so gaunt and skeletal. *But the extraordinary camaraderie among fellow prisoners that sprang up in all the POW camps caught fire in Al, and did so in time to save his life.
When I was demonstrating in America against Nixon and the Christmas bombings in Hanoi, Al and his fellow prisoners were holding hands under the full fury of those bombings, singing "God Bless America.” *It was those bombs that convinced Hanoi they would do well to release the American POWs, including my college teammate. *When he told me about the C-141 landing in Hanoi to pick up the prisoners, Al said he felt no emotion, none at all, until he saw the giant American flag painted on the plane's tail. *I stopped writing as Al wept over the memory of that flag on that plane, on that morning, during that time in the life of America.
It was that same long night, after listening to Al's story, that I began to make judgments about how I had conducted myself during the Vietnam War. *In the darkness of the sleeping Kroboth household, lying in the third-floor guest bedroom, I began to assess my role as a citizen in the '60s, when my country called my name and I shot her the bird. *Unlike the stupid boys who wrapped themselves in Viet Cong flags and burned the American one, I knew how to demonstrate against the war without flirting with treason or astonishingly bad taste. *I had come directly from the warrior culture of this country and I knew how to act. *But in the 25 years that have passed since South Vietnam fell, I have immersed myself in the study of totalitarianism during the unspeakable century we just left behind. *I have questioned survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, talked to Italians who told me tales of the Nazi occupation, French partisans who had counted German tanks in the forests of Normandy, and officers who survived the Bataan Death March. *I quiz journalists returning from wars in Bosnia, the Sudan, the Congo, Angola, Indonesia, Guatemala, San Salvador, Chile, Northern Ireland, Algeria. *As I lay sleepless, I realized I'd done all this research to better understand my country. *I now revere words like democracy, freedom, the right to vote, and the grandeur of the extraordinary vision of the founding fathers. *Do I see America's flaws? *Of course. *But I now can honor her basic, incorruptible virtues, the ones that let me walk the streets screaming my a** off that my country had no idea what it was doing in South Vietnam. *My country let me scream to my heart's content--the same country that produced both Al Kroboth and me.
Now, at this moment in New Jersey, I come to a conclusion about my actions as a young man when Vietnam was a dirty word to me. *I wish I'd led a platoon of marines in Vietnam. *I would like to think I would have trained my troops well and that the Viet Cong would have had their hands full if they entered a firefight with us. *From the day of my birth, I was programmed to enter the Marine Corps. *I was the son of a marine fighter pilot, and I had grown up on marine bases where I had watched the men of the corps perform simulated war games in the forests of my childhood. *That a novelist and poet bloomed darkly in the house of Santini strikes me as a remarkable irony. *My mother and father had raised me to be an Al Kroboth, and during the Vietnam era they watched in horror as I metamorphosed into another breed of fanatic entirely. *I understand now that I should have protested the war after my return from Vietnam, after I had done my duty for my country. *I have come to a conclusion about my country that I knew then in my bones but lacked the courage to act on: America is good enough to die for even when she is wrong.
I looked for some conclusion, a summation of this trip to my teammate's house. *I wanted to come to the single right thing, a true thing that I may not like but that I could live with. *After hearing Al Kroboth's story of his walk across Vietnam and his brutal imprisonment in the North, I found myself passing harrowing, remorseless judgment on myself. *I had not turned out to be the man I had once envisioned myself to be. *I thought I would be the kind of man that America could point to and say, "There. *That's the guy. *That's the one who got it right. *The whole package. *The one I can depend on.” *It had never once occurred to me that I would find myself in the position I did on that night in Al Kroboth's house in Roselle, New Jersey: an American coward spending the night with an American hero.
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Pat Conroy's novels include The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and Beach Music. *He lives on Fripp Island, South Carolina. *This essay is from his book, My Losing Season.