Much had changed, he told the cadets that day the creed of “Duty, Honor, Country” had not.
He died in the age of astronauts, having lived long enough to hear a young President speak confidently about landing a man on the moon and bringing him safely back to Earth. “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. Yet his mind and his eloquent tongue roamed nimbly over his 50 years in the Army and more. MacArthur was 82 when he made that final appearance at West Point, no longer as agile physically, perhaps, as he was when, as a spry 70-year-old, he ruled as viceroy in Japan, while simultaneously directing a war against communist forces in Korea. “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. “He was an amazing wordsmith and what an orator! He had an ability to say things so you could visualize exactly what he was talking about.” And hear it. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the place,” said Bob Boehm, an airline pilot in New Hampshire who was a plebe at West Point at the time. “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. “Duty, Honor, Country,” he solemnly intoned, invoking the three words that summed up the cadets’ calling. It was also an occasion for him to share his thoughts on the meaning of the West Point motto.
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.
When retired General of the Army Douglas A. Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society
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