On This Day - May 12, 1962, an old and frail General Douglas MacArthur gave his famous “Duty, Honor, Country” speech to graduating West Point cadets. Born on January 26, 1880, at a U.S. Army base in Little Rock, Arkansas, Douglas MacArthur seemed destined for military greatness from an early age. When he was young, MacArthur attended the West Texas Military Academy, from which he graduated as class Valedictorian. Later he went to the American Military Academy at West Point, from which he also graduated first in his class. Following his time at West Point, MacArthur embarked on what was a truly epic military career. He rose to prominence early when in 1914, during the American occupation of Veracruz, Mexico, he was nominated for the Medal of Honor for his actions during a daring reconnaissance mission.
From that point on, it was a fast rise for MacArthur. He achieved the rank of Brigadier General during World War I, served as Superintendent of West Point in 1919, and later became Chief of Staff of the United States Army. By the time of World War II, MacArthur was called out of retirement to serve as overall American commander in the Far East, a theater in which he did battle with the Japanese for more than three years before accepting their surrender in 1945. In the following years, MacArthur administered the occupation of Japan, during which he instituted many sweeping political and economic changes that gave Japan the strength to get back on its feet after the war.
In 1950, MacArthur was called away from duty in Japan to serve as overall American commander in the Korean War, during which his aggressive policies were able to push back the North Koreans and regain almost the entire Korean peninsula. However, it was these same policies that proved to be his downfall. Disregarding the President’s wishes, MacArthur pushed too close to Communist China, which in turn launched a massive attack on the United Nations troops in Korea. The U.S. and its allies were pushed back to the border of North and South Korea, where the war turned into a deadly stalemate.
After this disaster, the aging Douglas MacArthur was removed from command by President Harry Truman. In his later life, MacArthur returned to the United States, and in 1962 he was honored by West Point with the Sylvanus Thayer Award for outstanding service to the nation. After accepting the award, he gave a speech to the graduating cadets of the beloved school from which he too had graduated. The most famous part of the speech was this:
“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 reechoes: 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, The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell.”
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