OPINION:
In the depths of a cold night almost 250 years ago, a handful of soldiers waited their turn to cross a river and head toward their enemy in hopes of surprising them on Christmas. Most of them had less than a week left in their enlistments and were preparing to head home.
It would have been easy for those soldiers to slip off into the night and not board the boats for this one final and probably pointless battle. However, just about all of them stayed to cross the Delaware, march to Trenton and surprise and defeat the Hessians there on Dec. 26, 1776. That victory, more than any other, changed the fortunes of the Revolution and made it possible for the Americans to shake off the dust of Europe and lead the New World.
Not quite 168 years later, the 29th Infantry Division, which consisted almost entirely of Gen. George Washington’s fellow Virginians, waded ashore on the coast of Normandy in France at a beach given the code name of Omaha. Almost all of Company A of the 116th, the first ones out of the boats, were dead or wounded within minutes. On the cliffs above them, Army rangers seized Pointe du Hoc. Eventually, the surviving soldiers got off the beach and headed inland.
Like their predecessors in the U.S. Army that cold Christmas evening in 1776, they carried with them the hopes, dreams and fears of their countrymen for a better and more just world.
This weekend, we celebrated the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army in ways small and large, quiet and loud. To families who have a brother or sister, son or daughter, father or mother serving, June 14 is a day, like many others, filled with pride and hope and worry. To Army veterans it is a day for memories, most happy but some sad. To those still serving, it should be a day of intense and warranted sense of accomplishment. To borrow from President Reagan, “Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world. A veteran doesn’t have that problem.”
In an era in which less than 5% of the population has ever served in the military, it is tempting to imagine that soldiers are somehow different from the rest of us. The Army in wartime has always been a reflection of the nation. The men at Valley Forge, those who fought at Gettysburg and those now posted around the globe have been and are drawn from and reflect our citizenry. They are not Janissaries, they are not mercenaries. They are the sons and daughters of the nation.
They carry with them all the greatness and all the fallibilities of the nation. The Union (and Confederate) soldiers who survived their terrible war built the West. The soldiers who moved relentlessly through the ranks of the Wehrmacht and the Japanese Imperial Army came home to make the nation prosperous and ultimately set the stage to win the Cold War. The soldiers who were asked to sacrifice but who were not allowed to win their wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East came home with a well-earned skepticism toward their “leaders.”
Through it all, the U.S. Army has been the protector of the American nation, its citizens and those citizens’ dreams. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in his last public address at West Point, offered a direct assessment of the American soldier: “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.”
When the history of this great nation is written, the U.S. Army will figure prominently in it. For that, we should all be grateful.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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