It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh. My days of old have vanished — tone and tints. 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. I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. Their story is known to all of you. He was a great American in the tradition of Washington, Lee, and Jefferson. They had innocence lost, promises broken and glory found. But the uneasy peace that followed World War II was shattered at 4:00 a.m. on June 25, 1950 when 89,000 North Korean troops suddenly crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country. He cautioned President Kennedy against committing troops on the Asian mainland. Are they reliable? “During his infancy,” wrote historian and biographer William Manchester, “Indians attacked his father’s troops with bows and arrows; in his later years — when he proposed that wars be outlawed — superpowers were brandishing nuclear weapons.” He grew up in an age when an automobile was still a rare luxury. 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. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Read what some former West Point cadets remember of that day in May when the General gave the speech. 9 October 1962: Awarded Congressional Gold Medal. 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. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. The sultana visits the Heart of the Sworn to thank you personally for helping to recover the crown, and to request your presence at the forthcoming banquet as her guest of honor. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country. 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. It was, wrote Eric Goldman in The Crucial Decade, “the most substantial and noisiest fading away in history.”, The nation, meanwhile, shared Mac-Arthur’s frustration over a “no-win” war that would cost more than 54,000 American and more than a million Korean lives before the fighting ended in a stalemate after three years. Are they capable of victory? This does not mean that you are warmongers. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. General MacArthur’s speech ranks with President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as the most moving and greatest public speeches ever given. 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?”. For future generations of your sons and daughters, strike! Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of Duty—Honor—Country. It is the story of the American man at arms. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. You can also subscribe without commenting. “He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb,” Cousins wrote. MacArthur Square Norfolk, Virginia 23510 Ph: (757) 441-2965 Fax (757) 441-5389 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. This speech is a great example of personalizing a speech for the occasion and audience. 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…. This is book 1 in the Duty, Honor, Country Trilogy. 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. Are they brave? General MacArthur had graduated from West Point in June of 1903. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman. 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. I can almost hear the ticking of the second hand of destiny. The long gray line has never failed us. He started the speech stressing that these three words should “dictate what you want to be, what you can be, and what you will be.” because they need to be accepted as the public’s guide to daily action (MacArthur 1962). General Douglas MacArthur’s acceptance speech touched on several key ideas that he constantly reverberated: Duty, Honor, and Country. He had many famous speeches, one of which is called the “Duty, Honor, Country” speech. To purchase or view additional artwork by the artist, go to www.paulsteucke.com. Certainly I will not…. His life covered an amazing span. It also states what MacArthur thought represented and inspired a real, true soldier. You now face a new world, a world of change. It fills me with an emotion I cannot express. When retired General of the Army Douglas A. MacArthur made a farewell visit to his alma mater on May 12, 1962, it was to receive the Sylvanus Thayer Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Military Academy. The motto of the academy, enshrined in its coat of arms, is “Duty Honor Country”. “Duty, Honor, Country,” he solemnly intoned, invoking the three words that summed up the cadets’ calling. I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations have failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war…. It was two and a half years later when MacArthur did return, landing at Leyte with the Sixth Army in October 1944 to begin the months-long campaign to take back the islands from the Japanese. In the name of your sacred dead, strike! This does not mean that you are warmongers. Much has been made of the general’s flair for the dramatic. Following the surrender, MacArthur spoke in a broadcast to the American people: A new era is upon us. Neither had the courage and devotion of “the American man at arms.”. He continues how much character soldiers posses and that even though the world is changing the goal and necessity of soldiers will stay the same. 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. Eventually, he did fade away, leading a life of relative calm and quiet in retirement. Let the indomitable spirit of Bataan and Corregidor lead on…. For the enemy commander will reason that no one would be so brash to make such an attempt…. Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men’s minds. 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. MacArthur was 82 years old when he gave the speech. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. But these are some of the things they do. The following 28 minute video was made by the U.S. Army about the life and military career of General MacArthur. Though Chinese troops had already entered the war by the hundreds of thousands, MacArthur was not allowed to bomb bases and supply depots in Manchuria or the bridges over the Yalu River. Always their blood and sweat and tears as we sought the way and the truth and the light. 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. 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. 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. “America has let us down and won’t be trusted,” said Carlos Romulo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Filipino journalist who had joined MacArthur’s staff as press relations officer and would return as Foreign Secretary in the new Philippines Cabinet. It is a day of national mourning and tribute, in honor of those who bravely fought and died so … As the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, he received the formal surrender of Japan in a ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. Through “memory’s eye,” he recalled for the cadets that day, the courage and the struggles of the men in his command. “The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” An article in the May-June 1997 issue of the Journal of Historical Review quotes MacArthur as saying, “My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender.”. All West Point had given him was a lodestar, the academy motto: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’”. Rick Keyt has practiced law in Arizona since 1980. 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. Near the end of his days, he urged President Johnson not to send ground forces into Vietnam. It’s a magnificent and beautiful place, full of history and meaning. “I wish I had that man’s optimism,” Sherman said the next day. He was the son of General Arthur MacArthur, a Civil War hero who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor at age 18 and later commanded U.S. forces in the Philippines. They were fighting for country, for a way of life and for family. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. Third, “Duty, Honor; Country” defines the structure of ideals of the United States Army ‘and of West Point, Honor is the keystone value. If we don’t now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. 16 August 1962: Meets with President Kennedy at the White House. My days of old have vanished — tone and tint. 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. “Yes, that’s exactly what it amounts to.”. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. (Later he was told he could bomb “the South Korean end” of the bridges, a formidable task since some bridges across the winding river ran east and west, rather than north and south. 1950 Despite many who advised against it, Douglas MacArthur plans and executes his greatest military victory, the invasion of U.N. forces at Inchon at a time when the North Korean army occupied all of South Korea except a small pocket of land on the southern tip of the peninsula. “But the people still have confidence in MacArthur. Page Tools. Entering West Point with the class of ’68, I missed the honor and privilege to hear General MacArthur’s Farewell Address in Washington Hall, but the words have been studied and read over and over by mean countless times. “Duty,” “Honor,” “Country” — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you want to be, what you can be, what you will be. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. North Korean forces quickly overran the South Korean capital of Seoul and had U.S. troops pinned down on the perimeter of Pusan in the southeast corner of the peninsula. Classmates carried more than rifles and sabers into battle. “Unquestionably, he was the most gifted man-at-arms this nation ever produced,” wrote Manchester in his biography of the general, American Caesar. The guidance of Divine God points the way. 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. 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. His most famous words are in the pledge he made from Australia after he had been ordered out of the Philippines, over his protests, before the fall of Corregidor and Bataan in the early months of World War II: “I shall return,” he vowed. He reached the rank of brigadier general during World War I and was decorated for courage shown in the fighting on the western front, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross twice and the Silver Star seven times. By the end of the war, General MacArthur had received a fifth star, along with a Congressional Medal of Honor for actions taken in defense of the Philippines. Duty, Honor, Country: Douglas MacArthur by Jack Kenny May 26, 2012 When retired General of the Army Douglas A. MacArthur made a farewell visit to his alma mater on May 12, 1962, it … That set the stage for MacArthur’s unveiling of a bold plan to land forces behind the enemy lines at Inchon and attack the North Koreans from both directions. The excerpt consists of the first 8 paragraphs of the speech. Top Contributors: TheVestman, Stavi82, Leahbjackson + more. The shadows are lengthening for me. He then goes on about Duty, Honor, Country and how they are the foundation of every soldier. Much had changed, he told the cadets that day; the creed of “Duty, Honor, Country” had not. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. The invasion snatched victory from the jaws of defeat cutting off supplies to the North Korean army in all of South Korea, which allowed the U.N. to recapture the entire country. He flew the F-4 Phantom for five years in the United States Air Force, including combat missions over South Vietnam, North Vietnam and Laos in 1972. We have had our last chance. He spoke without notes for 34 minutes from the “poop deck” in front of the 2,100+ cadets. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. They had friendships, memories, children and wives. After you hear the General’s actual speech reread the text of the speech to get the full impact of the spoken words. Today marks my final roll call with you. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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. 1951 Douglas MacArthur retires again from the Army. 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. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. It is to win our wars. 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. 1964 Douglas MacArthur advises President Johnson to stay out of Vietnam. Repeatedly he exposed himself to enemy snipers, first as a lieutenant in the Philippines, shortly after the turn of the century, then as a captain in Mexico, and finally as a general in three great wars.” Yet his ability to inspire courage and confidence in others was perhaps his greatest gift. 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. It is the most inspiring and American speech I believe I have ever read. The modern nation-state is relatively new. He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. EDITOR'S NOTE: Robert Orr, a Republican, is a lawyer and was elected associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1994 and served on the court until 2004. Duty honor country Army flag West Point flag Army flag 12 x 18 USMA garden flag Outdoor West Point décor USMA décor myemptynestbynora. The problem is basically theological…. Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation’s destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. Who will take the responsibility for such a tragedy? His detractors — and they were legion — would dwell on his considerable ego, noting his fondness for the first person singular pronoun. “Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.” It was perhaps the most eloquent downplaying of a speaker’s own rhetorical skills since Lincoln assured the gathering at Gettysburg, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.” MacArthur proceeded to move both young cadets and battle-tested officers to the brink of tears with his eloquence of diction, poetry of imagination, and brilliance of metaphor. It was also an occasion for him to share his thoughts on the meaning of the West Point motto. 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. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. He goes on to explain how much being part of the military meant to him and how proud he is of all of the soldiers he fought along side. 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. I agree. 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.”. Admiral James Doyle, who would have to execute the landing, observed: “If MacArthur had gone on stage, we never would have heard of John Barrymore.”, Yet the landing was a success and North Korean forces were routed. You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. To learn more about General Douglas MacArthur, […] http://www.keytlaw.com/f-4/general-macarthurs-duty-honor-country-speech/ […]. 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. 25 May 1962: Awarded Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Duty, Honor, Country - General MacArthur's Thayer Award Speech -(1962) [top] No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award]. Image showing General MacArthur at West Point courtesy of the artist, Paul Steucke. His 30-minute address to a joint session of Congress — ending with the now-famous refrain from an old Army ballad, “old soldiers never die, they just fade away” — was interrupted with applause 34 times. The Speech “Duty, Honor, Country” was delivered by General Douglas MacArthur to the Cadets of the Military Academy in West Point, New York. If you flew the F-4 in the Vietnam War in any branch of the service please become an author on this site and tell your stories. It debuted at … MacArthur, then 71, returned home to a hero’s welcome, with a tumultuous reception in San Francisco, followed by record-setting turnouts at parades in his honor in Washington, New York, and other American cities. And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? 1903 Douglas MacArthur graduates first in his class at West Point with an overall average surpassed only by Robert E. Lee. Read 15 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. Additionally, Mac Arthur uses the phrase, “Duty, Honor, Country” repeatedly throughout the speech, reminding his audience of the unified message of his speech. Though her gesture leaves you speechless, you gather your composure and accept, already looking forward to your next meeting. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. The long gray line has never failed us. 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. Whether it's Duty, Honor, Country or Courage, Compassion, Justice -- it's time to step up. “When he talked about the sounds of the battlefield, you could almost feel the vibrations of the rounds going off, the explosions, even the smell of the battlefield,” Boehm recalls. Duty, Honor, Country. Results for {phrase} ({results_count} of {results_count_total}), Displaying {results_count} results of {results_count_total}. We must act now or we will die. Duty, honor, country By James Dobson, Op-ed Contributor This is Memorial Day weekend, and once again, we turn our thoughts to the men and women who have given their lives in defense of our country. Since 1958, the Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy has presented the Sylvanus Thayer Award to an outstanding citizen of the United States whose service and accomplishments in the national interest exemplify personal devotion to the ideals expressed in the West Point motto, “Duty, Honor, Country.”. Today marks my final roll call with you. This speech by one of our country’s greatest military leaders (see below after the end of the speech text for a short list of the incredible accomplishments of the MacArthur family) is timeless and as important today as it was in 1962.
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