The hour of 1700 24 Aug eastern daylight time has now come and gone, and all afternoon I watched the clock as I worked. It has now been five years since I stood in an open doorway at an air cargo hanger for US Airways at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport and watched as an Escort Sergeant and the Casualty Assistance Officer uncrated Mike's Casket and drape the American Flag over him, neatly cornering it out and not accepting anything less than perfection. I stood there, large tears dripping down my cheeks onto my coat, tie and dress shirt, trying to give a proper salute to Mike, an untrained civilian whose hand trembled against my forehead, my chest aching pain of a grieving heart. An office full of workers whose day was like any other suddenly realized what was happening and froze and stared. They were to say the least, aghast having been caught by surprise at the moment. As the Escort Sergeant and CAO satisfied themselves Mike's Flag was properly draped, they turned and looked at me, nodding with approval and I released my salute as they slid his Flag Draped Casket into the waiting hearse. I walked outside needing fresh air, but more importantly to call my wife Retta, as I had come alone. As she answered the phone I simply said "Our Boy is Home" and then the tears became a sob in unison as she sobbed from the other end. After a few moments I got in the hearse and rode the 30 plus miles to the funeral home, where Mike's mom and other dad were waiting and he would stay overnight, unannounced so the community could be given notice the next day and have their desired opportunity to welcome Mike home. It was the best we could do with just a two hour call block he was coming in.
Mike's Flag Draped Casket was just inches over my shoulder as we traveled many of the same roads he and I traveled over the years as I went back and forth with him on weekend, holiday and summer visitation trips between his mom's home and my home. Many moments of remembering, whether singing a goofy song, yelling up at our favorite local traffic copter announcer (Scott Slade who Mike called Scott Wade as a little boy), eating at a Burger King with a playground, visiting a game ranch where Mike once had to rescue his younger brother Wes from a somewhat aggressive small deer. Every mile was a memory, and yet another moment for a broken heart to ache even more. It was a long ride but not nearly long enough, and over too soon and then, it was time to share him with others.... It was my Last Ride to Take My Boy Home. It is burned in my memory as vividly as scenes on film captured on DVD. As I go monthly or more often to tend Mike's grave and visit him I travel by Hartsfield just eyeball distance from that Air Cargo Hanger on a monthly basis, sometimes more often, as well as many of the same highways we traveled that moment in time five years ago. I never fail to look over going and coming and feel that moment and remember my first glimpse of my Boy's Flag Draped Casket, and I never want to forget the pain, for to hurt deep you had to love deep.
People ask me about Mike, how I am doing, and sometimes how I cope and I like that, for it means they Remember Him. I tell them I will die with a broken heart, but I choose to live with as much joy as possible, for God gives us life, and my Boy would want me to go on and live as full and happy a life as possible. I owe it to God and my Boy and it is the least I can. And in a selfish way, it is my sticking it back to those who killed Mike, my way of taunting them and saying you hurt us bad but you failed to take us all out and we will now stand up and we will not cower, we will not retreat, we will not blame in bitterness and WE WILL REMEMBER MIKE WITH HONOR. I openly say that those who killed Mike and would rob our country of freedom would have been better off to have left him alone, for they awoke an entire family, community and many new friends around the world. Those who killed Mike failed, and he won. Mike and our family are not the only ones they failed with, for the Families of the Fallen in the War on Terror, even though knocked to their knees, as a whole, rose again to stand as tall as they might, joined by millions of supporters at home and hundreds of thousands of fellow soldiers and their families who stayed engaged, some many deployments over, even knowing what could happen.
Cut and Run was not a strategy, option or path to victory. Duty, Honor, Country, and might I now add Sacrifice, was! When others called to leave, those who really counted said no, I will go, some again and again, and many more gave their lives, while others had their lives altered in many ways. One in particular is SFC Mark Allen who served with Mike. Upon his redeployment from Iraq in 2006, he had a safe full time job at the State level with the Georgia Army National Guard. In mid 2008, when he got wind that a lot of his Iraq battle buddies, now with Bravo 2/121 of the 48th GAARNG were likely going to get orders in the coming year to deploy to Afghanistan, he demanded his way out of the safe job and into Bravo 2/121. I shall never forget on the 3rd anniversary gathering at Mike's grave, Mark and his wife came as they had the previous two years, and brought their one month old daughter and stood in the hot evening sun. He told me of his plans and hope to have orders to join Bravo 2/121 in a month or so. I was the unit's Family Readiness Chairperson and a month later at the Armory, which is near my work, in he pops and says its official "I'm here." Mark and his wife weren't with us at the fourth anniversary gathering, and a few days before I visited them at Bethesda where Mark lay in a coma from a serious gunshot wound and brain injury sustained in a fierce firefight where his squad encountered overwhelming enemy forces and fire on July 8, 2009, just a month into his Afghan deployment. I looked at Mark's wife as she cooed to him and stroked his arm telling him I was there. I choked back tears and mumbled "You all have to be the bravest folks I know because you saw up close and personal what happened to us, yet you went again." Mark Allen has only recently began to make the first simple steps of cognitive recognition, but they are steps that the odds didn't support were possible. And you know what, if he could get out of the bed, he would go again.
And there are so many more like the Allens. There are more of the Allens than the "others" who want to slurp at the fountain of freedom but who don't want to do any lifting, much less the heavy lifting, and when it gets tough are the first to call for cut and run. It is because of those like the Allens that we will endure, we will prevail and we will live free.
And it is because of those like the Allens, the Chuck Z, Greyhawks, Blackfive, Thunderrun, They have Names, Patti Patton-Bader and her entire SA organization too many to mention, as well as so many others that space and time can not measure, that my broken heart can rest gently on their support and endure with assurance that what Mike did mattered and what he gave will be Remembered with Honor. And I have to think thus it is so for the many like me. What a blessing to live among such great people in such a great country.
DUTY HONOR COUNTRY.
Robert Stokely
proud dad SGT Mike Stokely, Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
KIA 16 AUG 05 near Yusufiyah Iraq
US Army E 108 CAV 48th BCT GAARNG
Showing posts with label Duty Honor Country. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Duty Honor Country. Show all posts
August 25, 2010
March 8, 2010
"Fredneck's" Military History
Two articles in this weekend's Frederick News-Post detail the long and honored history of miltiary service in our bucolic valley.
29th Division Association celebrates proud history
Originally published March 07, 2010
By Megan Eckstein - News-Post Staff
The Maryland National Guard has a long and proud history in Frederick , with some of its companies tracing their lineage back to the Revolutionary War.
Frederick 's Company A, 1st Battalion, 175th Infantry Regiment is officially credited with serving in World War I, World War II and the current conflicts in the Middle East. The company was formerly in the 115th Infantry Regiment but was moved in 2006; however, it has remained in the 29th Division.
The 29th Division Association, composed of current and former soldiers in the division,
helps preserve the history of the division's guard units along the mid-Atlantic.
"There's a lot of lineage that goes with the 29th, they date back all the way back to the Revolutionary War," said John Wilcox Jr., national executive director of the association. "During the Civil War É it was the only military unit where men from the same state fought on both sides. There was a 1st Maryland Regiment that fought for the U.S.A., and there was a 1st Maryland regiment that fought for the Confederate group. This is the only time that this has ever happened like this. And it is quite interesting, they fought in the Battle of Front Royal -- unfortunately the feds lost that one."
Wilcox and Charles Lockard, national senior vice commander for the association, both joined Company A in February 1954 and made careers of their military service. Wilcox served 28 years, and Lockard served 41 years.
During their years with the Maryland Army National Guard, a primary role was responding to riots in the 1960s, particularly out on the Eastern Shore. They were federalized in 1968 to respond to riots in Baltimore after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Company A also went to the University of Maryland three times to respond to riots, including protests of the Vietnam War.
"I always said if I went back one more time I could graduate," Wilcox said.
The 29th Division Association has 2,500 members nationwide, with Frederick Post 78 being one of the most active chapters, organizing successful collection drives and participating in events to honor veterans.
Membership is down from a peak of about 3,500, in part because older veterans are dying off so quickly, Wilcox and Lockard said.
"Even though we're recruiting new men every day, we're losing many more," Wilcox said. "But the association sort of keeps us all together."
And...
Called to arms
Veteran recalls Frederick company's WWII involvement
Originally published March 07, 2010
By Megan Eckstein - News-Post Staff
Henry “Pete” Ponton Jr. began training with the local Maryland National Guard company before turning 18. He served 21 years, including a tour in World War II that put him right in the middle of the Battle of Normandy. Photo by Graham Cullen
Henry “Pete” Ponton Jr. began training with the local Maryland National Guard company before turning 18. He served 21 years, including a tour in World War II that put him right in the middle of the Battle of Normandy.
Sixty-nine years ago, Henry "Pete" Ponton Jr. was adjusting to life as an activated member of the Maryland National Guard. He had been called into service on Feb. 3, 1941, and expected to train and work full time for a year before resuming his normal schedule.
But everything changed when Pearl Harbor was attacked 10 months later and the U.S. officially joined World War II. Ponton served nonstop until October 1945, with his Frederick -based company fighting in the Battle of Normandy.
Ponton's unit -- Company A, 1st Battalion, 115th Infantry Regiment -- arrived in Europe in September 1942.
"We were in England 20 months before the invasion," Ponton said. "We were there so long, they started calling us the British homeguard."
Some of his time in England was stress-free as far as wars go. Stationed near Oxford University, Company A was safe from German bombs, thanks to an agreement not to attack schools.
"We were there six months before they moved us, and they had an aircraft factory right outside, but they didn't get bombed," Ponton said.
By the summer of 1944, when plans for the D-Day invasion were coming to fruition, Ponton and Company A prepared to embark on a deadly mission.
"We got on the ship in Camp Raleigh, which is in Plymouth, England. We got on a ship there and went to a town called Poole, which is where we rendezvoused for the trip across the (English) Channel," Ponton said. After two days of waiting, the time to invade France and expel the Nazi troops finally arrived.
"I remember going off the side of the ship, and once I got on shore I got behind a tank that had been knocked out," he said. "Of course then everybody started yelling 'get off the beach, get off the beach,' so we went up through a path in the minefield that the engineers had cleared."
"We stopped and I looked back, and it was the most horrifying sight I ever saw," Ponton said. "All these ships were coming in and landing. You could see the obstacles on the beach ... every once in a while you'd see a body fly up in the air where someone had stepped on a mine. And there were a lot of soldiers laying on the beach."
The 29th Infantry Division, which included Ponton's company, was ordered to leave the beach and get to St. Lo within nine days. It took about a month.
Ponton, 87, said he doesn't usually talk about D-Day or the rest of his time in World War II, even though he loved serving in the National Guard. He started training on Monday nights at the old armory on Bentz Street when he was a teenager, tagging along with his brother, Grover, 10 years his senior. Ponton enlisted in Company A in June 1940, when he turned 18.
Ponton served as his company's armorer, "taking care of the weapons, making sure they were put back in the hands of the troops," he said. During the war, he and other armorers were pulled to create a single work unit to care for the entire regiment's weapons. They'd typically work between the front line and the artillery, and Ponton said he loved the work.
After the war, he rejoined the Guard in 1947 and transferred to the Army Reserve in 1950. He was once again called into active duty in 1961 during the Berlin Crisis, but his reserve unit went only as far as Fort Meade and Fort A.P. Hill, Va. He retired as a sergeant first class soon afterward, focusing on his full-time job as a federal protective officer and on his family.
Ponton was married to wife Mida for 65 years before her death in 2008. They have two sons, Henry III and Michael, as well as seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Ponton has lived in Frederick since he was born in 1922 and said he plans to stay here.
Of the 170 men who deployed in Company A in 1941, he is one of about six or seven who are still alive.
"We used to have a reunion every year after the war, but it got so bad that a lot of our guys were dying off and we had to discontinue that," Ponton said. "I think it's been about 10 years since we had one."
Ponton is the only Company A veteran left in the 29th Division Association, a group for current and former members of the division that includes the 115th Infantry Regiment.
"You're the only one left. We ought to give you a gold star, Pete," said John Wilcox Jr., Ponton's friend and national executive director for the association.
"I'm surprised myself, I never thought I would live this long," Ponton replied.
29th Division Association celebrates proud history
Originally published March 07, 2010
By Megan Eckstein - News-Post Staff
The Maryland National Guard has a long and proud history in Frederick , with some of its companies tracing their lineage back to the Revolutionary War.
Frederick 's Company A, 1st Battalion, 175th Infantry Regiment is officially credited with serving in World War I, World War II and the current conflicts in the Middle East. The company was formerly in the 115th Infantry Regiment but was moved in 2006; however, it has remained in the 29th Division.
The 29th Division Association, composed of current and former soldiers in the division,
helps preserve the history of the division's guard units along the mid-Atlantic.
"There's a lot of lineage that goes with the 29th, they date back all the way back to the Revolutionary War," said John Wilcox Jr., national executive director of the association. "During the Civil War É it was the only military unit where men from the same state fought on both sides. There was a 1st Maryland Regiment that fought for the U.S.A., and there was a 1st Maryland regiment that fought for the Confederate group. This is the only time that this has ever happened like this. And it is quite interesting, they fought in the Battle of Front Royal -- unfortunately the feds lost that one."
Wilcox and Charles Lockard, national senior vice commander for the association, both joined Company A in February 1954 and made careers of their military service. Wilcox served 28 years, and Lockard served 41 years.
During their years with the Maryland Army National Guard, a primary role was responding to riots in the 1960s, particularly out on the Eastern Shore. They were federalized in 1968 to respond to riots in Baltimore after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Company A also went to the University of Maryland three times to respond to riots, including protests of the Vietnam War.
"I always said if I went back one more time I could graduate," Wilcox said.
The 29th Division Association has 2,500 members nationwide, with Frederick Post 78 being one of the most active chapters, organizing successful collection drives and participating in events to honor veterans.
Membership is down from a peak of about 3,500, in part because older veterans are dying off so quickly, Wilcox and Lockard said.
"Even though we're recruiting new men every day, we're losing many more," Wilcox said. "But the association sort of keeps us all together."
And...
Called to arms
Veteran recalls Frederick company's WWII involvement
Originally published March 07, 2010
By Megan Eckstein - News-Post Staff
Henry “Pete” Ponton Jr. began training with the local Maryland National Guard company before turning 18. He served 21 years, including a tour in World War II that put him right in the middle of the Battle of Normandy. Photo by Graham Cullen
Henry “Pete” Ponton Jr. began training with the local Maryland National Guard company before turning 18. He served 21 years, including a tour in World War II that put him right in the middle of the Battle of Normandy.
Sixty-nine years ago, Henry "Pete" Ponton Jr. was adjusting to life as an activated member of the Maryland National Guard. He had been called into service on Feb. 3, 1941, and expected to train and work full time for a year before resuming his normal schedule.
But everything changed when Pearl Harbor was attacked 10 months later and the U.S. officially joined World War II. Ponton served nonstop until October 1945, with his Frederick -based company fighting in the Battle of Normandy.
Ponton's unit -- Company A, 1st Battalion, 115th Infantry Regiment -- arrived in Europe in September 1942.
"We were in England 20 months before the invasion," Ponton said. "We were there so long, they started calling us the British homeguard."
Some of his time in England was stress-free as far as wars go. Stationed near Oxford University, Company A was safe from German bombs, thanks to an agreement not to attack schools.
"We were there six months before they moved us, and they had an aircraft factory right outside, but they didn't get bombed," Ponton said.
By the summer of 1944, when plans for the D-Day invasion were coming to fruition, Ponton and Company A prepared to embark on a deadly mission.
"We got on the ship in Camp Raleigh, which is in Plymouth, England. We got on a ship there and went to a town called Poole, which is where we rendezvoused for the trip across the (English) Channel," Ponton said. After two days of waiting, the time to invade France and expel the Nazi troops finally arrived.
"I remember going off the side of the ship, and once I got on shore I got behind a tank that had been knocked out," he said. "Of course then everybody started yelling 'get off the beach, get off the beach,' so we went up through a path in the minefield that the engineers had cleared."
"We stopped and I looked back, and it was the most horrifying sight I ever saw," Ponton said. "All these ships were coming in and landing. You could see the obstacles on the beach ... every once in a while you'd see a body fly up in the air where someone had stepped on a mine. And there were a lot of soldiers laying on the beach."
The 29th Infantry Division, which included Ponton's company, was ordered to leave the beach and get to St. Lo within nine days. It took about a month.
Ponton, 87, said he doesn't usually talk about D-Day or the rest of his time in World War II, even though he loved serving in the National Guard. He started training on Monday nights at the old armory on Bentz Street when he was a teenager, tagging along with his brother, Grover, 10 years his senior. Ponton enlisted in Company A in June 1940, when he turned 18.
Ponton served as his company's armorer, "taking care of the weapons, making sure they were put back in the hands of the troops," he said. During the war, he and other armorers were pulled to create a single work unit to care for the entire regiment's weapons. They'd typically work between the front line and the artillery, and Ponton said he loved the work.
After the war, he rejoined the Guard in 1947 and transferred to the Army Reserve in 1950. He was once again called into active duty in 1961 during the Berlin Crisis, but his reserve unit went only as far as Fort Meade and Fort A.P. Hill, Va. He retired as a sergeant first class soon afterward, focusing on his full-time job as a federal protective officer and on his family.
Ponton was married to wife Mida for 65 years before her death in 2008. They have two sons, Henry III and Michael, as well as seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Ponton has lived in Frederick since he was born in 1922 and said he plans to stay here.
Of the 170 men who deployed in Company A in 1941, he is one of about six or seven who are still alive.
"We used to have a reunion every year after the war, but it got so bad that a lot of our guys were dying off and we had to discontinue that," Ponton said. "I think it's been about 10 years since we had one."
Ponton is the only Company A veteran left in the 29th Division Association, a group for current and former members of the division that includes the 115th Infantry Regiment.
"You're the only one left. We ought to give you a gold star, Pete," said John Wilcox Jr., Ponton's friend and national executive director for the association.
"I'm surprised myself, I never thought I would live this long," Ponton replied.
September 17, 2009
WE Have to Stand Up For This Fallen Hero's Wife and Child - Robert Stokely
I can not add to what this story says except to say where I come from you don't mess with our women and you don't mess with our children. How can our government possibly, even remotely, do this. We must fight, and I mean literally fight if need be, for this wife and child, for a Hero died to give us not only the right, but the duty to do so.
My boy was a CAV Scout; my great great grandaddy was a cavalryman himself. I am not. But, I can yell charge and will fight. CHARGE!!!!
Join me.
Robert Stokely
proud dad SGT Mike Stokely
KIA 16 AUG 05 near Yusufiyah Iraq
USA E 108 CAV 48th BCT GAARNG
Marine's Widow in Immigration Limbo
More about Michael: (H/T: Brat)
My boy was a CAV Scout; my great great grandaddy was a cavalryman himself. I am not. But, I can yell charge and will fight. CHARGE!!!!
Join me.
Robert Stokely
proud dad SGT Mike Stokely
KIA 16 AUG 05 near Yusufiyah Iraq
USA E 108 CAV 48th BCT GAARNG
Marine's Widow in Immigration Limbo
MARYVILLE, Tenn. (Sept. 17) — Hotaru Ferschke just wants to raise her 8-month-old son in his grandparents' Tennessee home, surrounded by photos and memories of the father he'll never meet: a Marine who died in combat a month after marrying her from thousands of miles away.
Sgt. Michael Ferschke was killed in Iraq in 2008, leaving his widow and infant son, both Japanese citizens, in immigration limbo: A 1950s legal standard meant to curb marriage fraud means U.S. authorities do not recognize the marriage, even though the military does.
Ferschke and his bride had been together in Japan for more than a year, and she was pregnant when he deployed. They married by signing their names on separate continents and did not have a chance to meet again in person after the wedding, which a 57-year-old immigration law requires for the union to be considered consummated.
"She is being denied because they are saying her marriage is not valid because it was not consummated — despite the fact that they have a child together," said Brent Renison, an immigration lawyer in Oregon who has advised the family.
Hotaru Ferschke and the baby, Michael "Mikey" Ferschke III, are staying for now on a temporary visa at the home of her parents-in-law, in the Smoky Mountains town of Maryville. Robin and Michael Ferschke Sr., who are fighting for their daughter-in-law to stay, have emblazoned their son's picture on everything from a blanket draped on the back of the couch to a waving banner on the fence outside.
The 22-year-old Marine radio operator met the young Japanese woman at a party while he was stationed in Okinawa. Though neither knew much of the other's language, something clicked.
"He called me after they met and he goes, 'Mom, I am in love,'" Robin Ferschke said.
The couple were together about 13 months before he left for Iraq in April 2008. He had proposed and they were trying to conceive a baby before he deployed, Hotaru Ferschke said.
About two weeks after he left, she found she was pregnant. He wanted to get married quickly so she could start getting health benefits as the spouse of an American soldier, she said.
They agreed on a proxy wedding, which has a long history in the military and in some other cases where bride and groom can't be in the same place for a ceremony.
Procedures for a proxy marriage vary by country. Some take place by phone while others require a proxy to physically stand in for the absent partner during a ceremony.
Japan doesn't require a wedding ceremony, and couples getting married only have to complete sworn affidavits proving they are legally free to marry and register at a Japanese municipal government office, according to the U.S. Embassy. Hotaru Ferschke said she and her husband got their proxy marriage simply by completing the paperwork and their marriage was final on July 10, one month before he was shot during a house search.
The U.S. military recognizes proxy marriages for couples separated by war and helps facilitate them. The Marines are paying survivor benefits to Ferschke and her baby.
Proxy marriages are legal in at least four U.S. states. One of the most famous proxy weddings in recent history was that between Ekaterina Dmitriev in Texas to Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko in 2003 as he was floating in the international space station.
Pregnant and alone in Japan, Ferschke tried to apply for permanent residency in the United States and was denied.
Kenneth Sherman, a field office director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who handled the Ferschke case, declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about it. In a letter to the widow, Sherman said he believed that U.S. law required the denial, although he found the situation "personally distressing."
"You have already sacrificed so much for your country and your soon-to-be born son has lost a father," Sherman wrote.
Renison, who advocates for foreign spouses of American citizens, said the widow ran into a complicated and confusing set of immigration rules regarding marriage to foreigners.
The Immigration & Nationality Act says that, for the purposes of immigration law, the definition of spouse does not include a "wife or husband by reason of any marriage ceremony where the contracting parties thereto are not physically present in the presence of each other, unless the marriage shall have been consummated."
A number of immigration laws passed in the 1940s made it easier for brides of American GIs to immigrate, but a consummation requirement passed in 1952 for proxy weddings was designed to curb marriage fraud.
"It's supposed to prevent people from marrying somebody they are not really intending to have a life with. The law essentially requires them to have met after the marriage," said Margaret Stock, a lawyer who assists military families through the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
"What's odd about this case is that it appears the consummation part of the law was already met, but it was prior to the marriage."
There's no mention of consummation prior to the wedding in the statute, which Renison considers outdated and in need of reform.
"Well, 1952 was a different time," Renison said. "And back then, I'm sure they considered having sexual intercourse out of wedlock to be just fornication."
Historian Nancy Cott, who wrote a book called "Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation," said proxy marriages have been commonly used by Japanese and Korean immigrants to America. But Cott said U.S immigration authorities have never liked this type of marriage "because it is inconsistent with Western Christian ideas of how marriage takes place."
The Ferschke family is hoping a private bill introduced by U.S. Rep. John Duncan this summer will allow Hotaru to stay in the U.S., but each setback has become a reminder of their loss. A private bill affects the case of just one person, rather than changing the law as a whole.
"We still have a hard time accepting this," Robin Ferschke said. "We're trying to go forward, celebrate his life, but then every time we turn around we get a constant reminder."
The private bill was referred to a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in July but will likely need a Senate co-sponsor to move forward. With Congress facing a massive health care reform package as it goes back into session this month, there may not be enough time to get the legislation passed before Hotaru Ferschke leaves in January.
"She's like my daughter," Robin Ferschke said. "I know my child chose the perfect wife and mother of his child."
More about Michael: (H/T: Brat)
September 15, 2008
Duty - Honor - Country
I noticed over there on the right a comment left by Mr. Stokely in which he uses these three words. He uses these words to describe the life of his son Sgt Mike Stokely, but many years ago another great man used these words as the basis of his farewell speech. A speech that summarized his life in the military just as well as they summarize Mike's life.
That man was General Douglas MacArthur and this is his Farewell Speech
Given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point on May 12, 1962
General Westmoreland, General Groves, 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 for 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 meaning 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 want to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point 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 action; 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 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 temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, 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 battlefields 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 it 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 twenty 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 mire of shell-pocked 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 they saw the way and the light.
And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of 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 marked the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind - the chapter of the space age. 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 greater, 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; of purifying sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred 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 purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; 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 guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators 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 firm 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 tenfold 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 warmongers. 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 tints. 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 then, but with thirsty ear, 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 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.
Two years later, on April 5 1964, General Douglas MacArthur died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He was buried in Norfolk, VA.
That man was General Douglas MacArthur and this is his Farewell Speech
Given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point on May 12, 1962
General Westmoreland, General Groves, 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 for 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 meaning 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 want to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point 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 action; 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 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 temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, 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 battlefields 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 it 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 twenty 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 mire of shell-pocked 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 they saw the way and the light.
And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of 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 marked the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind - the chapter of the space age. 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 greater, 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; of purifying sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred 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 purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; 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 guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators 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 firm 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 tenfold 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 warmongers. 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 tints. 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 then, but with thirsty ear, 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 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.
Two years later, on April 5 1964, General Douglas MacArthur died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He was buried in Norfolk, VA.
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