Pretty good Wikipedia article on MacArthur. The highlight may be this quote from his famous West Point speech, when his health was failing, c. 1962, if I recall:
"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 re-echoes: 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, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell."
Oh, I forgot. You should Google Gene Autry and his Martin guitar. It was the first of the 45 series, Martin's most expensive model (elaborately embellished - tacky to me, but prized in 1933). His name is spelled out in mother-of-pearl across the fretboard.
Pretty good Wikipedia article on MacArthur. The highlight may be this quote from his famous West Point speech, when his health was failing, c. 1962, if I recall:
ReplyDelete"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 re-echoes: 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, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell."
Oh, I forgot. You should Google Gene Autry and his Martin guitar. It was the first of the 45 series, Martin's most expensive model (elaborately embellished - tacky to me, but prized in 1933). His name is spelled out in mother-of-pearl across the fretboard.
ReplyDeleteHere's the whole MacArthur speech at WP in '62:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nationalcenter.org/MacArthurFarewell.html