Patton and MaCarthur

The two greatest American military leaders of living memory, Generals George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, knew positively that our nation faced serious threats from within…those “domestic enemies” referred to in our Constitution, and from whom our elected representatives swear oaths to protect us.

Their brilliance on the battlefield is legendary, both as individual soldiers with their own battlefield experiences, and as Field Grade, combat commanders who led by example, often from forward positions where the action was.

Neither man could stomach cowardice, malfeasance, or traitors.

Both men mistrusted their civilian leaders, and with good reason: They saw battlefield victories lost for unexplainable reasons, not the least of which were the questionable motives of certain civilians in positions above them or their own commanders who danced to the same music as the politicians.

Both men were feared by powerful subversive elements in the United States who were frightened of their mighty reputations as soldiers and for the fact that neither man could be bought or threatened into compliance with subverting the nation each loved so well.

These are some of their words. Learn them well, and let them speak to you, to the inside of your own heart, as Americans. This is your legacy. You are the Posterity that inspired them. Cherish their memory and hard won wisdom. Be ever ready to stand and defend what they stood for and defended: This nation, what it once was, what it may again be..

General George S, Patton:

“Americans do not surrender.”

“The only thing to do when a son of a bitch looks cross-eyed at you is to beat the hell out of him right then and there.”

“Politicians are the lowest form of life on the earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.”

“The whole damned world is going communist (1945).”

“There are all kinds of low class slime who are trying and will continue to try to wreck this country from the inside. Most of them don't know it, but they are actually working for the Russians. Some of them do know it, though. It doesn't matter whether they call themselves communists, socialists, or just plain liberals. That is what they are doing.”

“May God deliver us from our friends; we can handle the enemy.”

MacArthur:

DUTY HONOR COUNTRY

Duty, honor, country...those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you want to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they build. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms.

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.

In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs, in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.

Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country.

Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storm, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory-always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country.

...Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

...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.