Reading B.I.F.

In observance of Veterans Day, this was the following closing passage by Douglas MacArthur to his farewell address to the cadets at West Point on May 12, 1962:

"You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense.
From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the
moment the war tocsin sounds. The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a
million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white
crosses thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier, above all
other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of
war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers:
'Only the dead have seen the end of war.'

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." (Douglas MacArthur)