The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall
Dad’s unit landed at Le Havre and, partly due to a six-week delay at the Bulge, made sporadic progress. They eventually crossed five countries and were at Berchtesgaden when Germany surrendered.
He thought Veterans Day speeches were too long and pretty much the same. He generally skipped the program and went to the cemetery, taking me whether I wanted to go or not. There, wandering among the stones, he’d make his own speech. It was short and also the same every year. “Old soldiers never die” he’d muse, “They just fade away.”
Dad thought highly of Douglas MacArthur, who made the line famous in a 1951 address to Congress that was more about politics than it was soldiers. Harry Truman spoke of the general’s message in words that’ll test our censor.
As most readers know, MacArthur was valedictorian of his West Point class, said to have achieved the third highest GPA ever at the academy. He served with distinction in France during World War I, was appointed director of West Point and later U.S. Army Chief of Staff. He did his time, retired, then returned to duty at the onset of World War II. MacArthur was decorated repeatedly, became only the fifth man to achieve the rank of General of the Army, and had much to do with defeating and then rebuilding Japan.
When North Korea invaded South Korea, MacArthur was placed in charge of United Nations forces. It was then his disagreements with President Truman boiled over and he was fired – at least in part because Truman feared he’d nuke Communist China. MacArthur reportedly said he wouldn’t have, but he believed war was a last resort and once engaged the objective was to win. He did not like a civilian dictating military strategy.
Truman was famously quoted as saying “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb SOB, although he was.”
MacArthur was extremely popular, a Republican, and Republican members of Congress poked a finger in Truman’s eye by asking the general to address a joint session. His speech is interesting, mostly a defense of his own strategy, a chastising of the president, and a warning that appeasement would result in increasing and long-term problems with China and North Korea. His address ended with reference to a barracks ballad about old soldiers. Like them, he said, he was going to “just fade away.”
In reality the song, during his youth, usually did not convey the melancholy mood implied by MacArthur. There were several versions, all of them satirical depictions of military life. Some were off color. The most popular ending, probably one MacArthur heard on the parade grounds at West Point, was this: “Old soldiers never die. Young ones just wish they would.”
After the speech, Gene Autry, a one-time Democrat who became a Goldwater/Reagan conservative, wrote and recorded a version with the general in mind. It ends with this syrupy sentiment: ”Now somewhere there stands a man. His duty o’er and won. The world will ne’er forget him. To him we say, ‘Well done.’”
Truman had a less sentimental view than Autry. When asked about the matter by a biographer his recorded answer was “It’s nothing but a bunch of damn BS.”
You gotta love Harry.
The public, though, did not. After firing MacArthur, Truman’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll dropped to 22 percent, the lowest any U.S. president has ever had – including Nixon after Watergate.
And for those who question MacArthur’s judgment, and think Truman may have been right about the man’s intellect, keep in mind that the old general advised both Kennedy and Johnson against a troop buildup in Vietnam. The mistakes had already been made, he said, and chickens were coming home to roost.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.