Subject: Duty, Honor, Country......(guru)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 130102 -0600 (CST)
From: "Roy L. Beavers"
To: emfguru
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Hi everybody:
I first heard the expression "duty, honor, country" nearly fifty
years ago.... As a brand new ensign in the U.S. Navy, I was bobbing
"up and down" -- rather than sailing -- as the combat information center
officer of a destroyer operating in the cold, wintry, choppy waters off
the coast of Korea.
The U.S. was then engaged in the "police action" later to be known as the
Korean War. We who were there knew that it was not a police action. It
was a bona fide, miserable "shooting" war..... My most vivid memories of
that winter in 1953 were of the "all hands topside" to chip the freezing
ice off the upper decks of the ship, and of a bleak bitter cold search
that we conducted (via our motor whale boat) to find the bodies of two
U.S. airmen who had been shot down. As it happened, I was the boat officer
at the time we found one body - frozen like an icicle - bobbing up and
down against the shoreline of one of the thousands of islands that dot the
Korean coast.
We knew it was not a police action. And we were pretty cynical about the
'half-way' measures the U.S. was employing to fight that war ... as the
U.S. would do again less than twenty years later in Vietnam.
General MacArthur had already been relieved of his command in Korea by
Truman ... and I believe that from that moment forward ... the average
soldier or sailor "stuck" in that war knew that he was nothing more than a
helpless pawn in a giant game of international "capitalism vs communism"
sweepstakes..... He was "sacrifice-able"......
So, in that state of mind, someone - I'll never remember who - mentioned
the concept that we were there out of a sense of "duty, honor, country."
Those words are the code of the corps of cadets of the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point. So often, when soldiers wonder what the 'hell'
they are doing in some "god-awful" place ... fighting for "international
sweepstakes" (that don't even present a clear connection to the U.S. and
"home"), the notion of "duty, honor, country" is raised in bitterness and
cynicism. So it was, I believe, that bleak winter in Korea.
In later years, though, "duty honor, country" was to come to have a more
profound meaning to me. Like many other "professionals", I eventually
realized that the role of the U.S. in the world after W.W. II had changed.
Like it or not, after W.W. II, America had to take on responsibilities and
military tasks that called for "peace keeping" or "world stability" which
- as in Korea - involved some pretty serious fighting involving much death
and personal sacrifice..... We are finding that is still the case, most
recently in Kosovo....
I came to realize that the "professionals" (like myself) who were living
through those experiences (without glamorizing it or without any
sense of being heroes) were adopting the "duty, honor, country" code
as their own - as a central truth within their lives..... As something
that they realized was, indeed, worthy of their lifetime commitment....
Yes, it becomes a habit - a constant in their lives - as well as a
commitment. I see that attitude and spirit often today in the gatherings
of veterans or in my occasional visits to the VFW halls.
They eventually find that they are not likely to make any decisions or
take any personal course of action that would go against that code ...
because, indeed, they become 'comfortable' with it..... They believe
it - not cynically as they may first have "learned" it - but with
conviction. They know it provides them a steady, serene beacon for the
conduct of their lives.... And that it is a worthy commitment that
translates "their oath" into a readiness to SERVE the Republic against
ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC!!....
I saw that in John McCain today ... as I watched him bow out of the race
for the presidency..... "I've been in the service of my country since I
was seventeen years old," he said..... That's it!! Hear it - 'duty,
honor, country'..... 'I don't know any other way'...... He might have
said....
His full statement, in "suspending" his race for the presidency, after a
disappointing Super Tuesday of primary election defeats, kept saying the
same thing to me: ...."I'm going ahead with this fight - for fundamental
change in our corrupted political process - because it is my DUTY, my
(life of) HONOR, to my COUNTRY....."
.......And he will.....!!! And, there are many others of us "out
here" ... John ... who will also continue the fight with you.....
I also want to say to my friends here on EMF-L ... that I have never been
fully able to explain (to myself) my own determination about continuing
the 'EMF fight' ... except ... perhaps ... in the same terms: duty,
honor, country.....
Cheerio....
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
roy@emfguru.com
.....It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.....
NEW!!! Website... http://emfguru.com
...................People are more important than profits.................
Missed opportunity...
$$$$$ We could have changed the corrupted system!! $$$$$
McCain !!
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com