This Memorial Message was given by Chaplain Brinsfield at the service conducted near Lusk Reservoir.  USMA subsequently sent a copy of his talk to those who had attended the service.  This is the message and the format is intended to capture what Chaplain Brinsfield distributed to those of us who attended the service.

Memorial Message

Twentieth Anniversary

Reunion

Class of 1962

U.S.M.A.

by

Chaplain (Maj) John W. Brinsfield

Assistant Professor, Department of History

United States Military Academy

West Point, New York 10996

Scripture Reading:  Romans 8:32-39

It would be neither an exaggeration nor a cliché to say that those whom we memorialize here today were some of the brightest and best of the 601 members in the Class of 1962.  That is no trivial statement, either, if one realizes that the Class of '62 compiled 454 Bronze Stars, 58 Purple Hears, 34 Silver Stars and one Congressional Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War.

The deceased members of this class were outstanding both as cadets and as alumni officers in the Army and Marine Corps.  Curing their cadet years one of those whom we remember today was elected an Olmstead Scholar, six were football players, one was a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic Team and eighteen were active in the West Point Debate Council and Forum.

As alumni, one of the deceased members of the Class of '62 was an Assistant Professor in the Military Academy's Mechanics Department, one served on the staff of the Infantry School's Commandant, and one was a graduate student in Brazil.  Ironically, four men, Captains McDonough, Anderson, Crabtree, and Casp, who had been on the West Point Debate Team together the entire four years they were cadets, were all killed in Vietnam from August 1966 to November 1967.  One, 1LT Frank S. Reasoner, won the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1965.  Others, whose names are listed in the program, were involved in many activities including devoted service to their Catholic and Protestant Churches.  All, I believe, were good men.

As I looked at their names and faces in the 1962 Howitzer, I wondered what common experiences had bound them together.  Not all members of the Class of '62 were in combat, not all stayed in the Army, not all of these we recall were killed in battle.

I suppose what contributed to their sense of class unity were the experiences they shared here at West Point from their arrival in 1958, through the 1961 Kennedy Inaugural Parade, to their graduation on 6 June 1962.

I think this class occupied a somewhat unique place in the history of the Military Academy, for the speakers who came to West Point to address you from 1959 to 1962 included some of the greatest heroes of World War II and some of the most distinguished statesmen of postwar America.

Henry Cabot Lodge received the Thayer Award in 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961, and Douglas MacArthur in 1962.  Two of the memorable graduation speeches of those four years were delivered by Mr. Lodge in 1959 when you were fourthclassmen and by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 when you were cadets promotable.  I am not sure that we always listen to great speeches when they are delivered because we often don't recognize them as such at the time.  Yet I felt today some of the ideals that were expressed by Ambassador Lodge, General MacArthur, and President Kennedy might remind us of the purpose for which we serve and for which the deceased members of this class were willing to lay down their lives.  I should like therefore to recall just a few paragraphs of three of these speeches for you.  Ambassador Lodge spoke at Graduation on June 3, 1959.  The theme of his speech might have been "Duty:  A Summoning Word."  Mr. Lodge noted that:

"For 157 years American has looked to the graduates of West Point to lead her through the valley of danger.  Whoever is stirred by the recognition that duty is a summoning word; and whoever is moved by the thought of the millions of officers and men who march through the pages of American history under the leadership of Grand and Sherman; of Pershing; and of Eisenhower and MacArthur, must thrill at being in this place where such leadership was forged.

West Point's motto----"Duty, Honor, Country"--inspires its graduates, to be sure.  But it is a noble watchword for all Americans because implicit in it is the idea of selflessness, of striving in behalf of something bigger than yourself.

For I ask you to take it from a man who has spent much of his life in foreign relations, that what the world admires about American is not the angle player or the corner cutter or the smart aleck, but the man with a code--generous and high-principled--a code by which he lives.  You know that at moments it is as difficult to give an order as to obey one.  Yet you are equipped to do both because, as West Pointers, you have such a code.

You are on the threshold of great careers--richer in the true sense of the word than any purely money-making occupation could possible be.  They will be richer in terms of the reward that you get during your life; richer in honor and in satisfaction for responsible work well done; and richer in the meaning which they will give to human life when you measure that life's importance in the scale of eternal values.

The daily grist of talk about missiles, necessary though they are, must never let us forget that missiles can never replace them.

Four hundred years before the birth of Christ, Pericles said this about the soldiers who had died in war:

'They faced the foe as they drew near him in the strength of their own manhood; and when the shock of battle came, they chose rather to suffer the uttermost than to win life by weakness.  So their memory has escaped the reproaches of men's lips, but they bore instead on the bodies the marks of men's hands, and in a moment of time, at the climax of their lives, were rapt away from a world filled, for their dying eyes, not with terror but with glory.

Such were the men who lie here and such the city that inspired them.  We survivors may pray to be spared their bitter hour, but must disdain to meet the foe with a spirit less triumphant.....

They gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchers, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by.  For the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men.'"

General Douglas MacArthur delivered his famous "Duty, Honor, Country" speech in Washington Hall, without notes, on May 12, 1962.  Some of his remarks may be particularly appropriate for the Vietnam experience:

"And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropical 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 passwords of "Duty, Honor, Country".

The code which those words perpetrate embraces the highest moral law and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind.  Its restraints are from the things that are wrong.  The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training--sacrifice.  In battle, and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when He created man in His own image.  No physical courage and no greater strength can take the place of the divine help which alone can sustain him.  However hard the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind."

President John F. Kennedy spoke about "a whole new kind of strategy" at your graduation on June 6, 1962:

"I know that many of you may feel, and many of our citizens may feel, that in these days of the nuclear age, when war may last in its final form a day or two or three days before much of the world is burned up, that your service to your country will be only standing and waiting.  Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.  I am sure that many Americans believe that the days before World War II were the golden age when the stars were falling on all the graduates of West Point, that that was the golden time of service and that you have moved into a period where military service, while vital, is not as challenging as it was then.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The fact of the matter is that the period just ahead in the next decade will offer more opportunities for service to the graduates of this Academy than ever before in the history of the United States, because all around the world, in countries which are heavily engaged in the maintenance of their freedom, graduates of this Academy are heavily involved; whether it is in Viet Nam or in Laos or, in Thailand, whether it is a military attaché in some Latin American country during a difficult and challenging period, whether it is the commander of our troops in South Korea - the burdens that will be placed upon you when you fill those positions as you must inevitably, will require more from you than ever before in our history.......these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training.

Above all, you will have a responsibility to deter war as well as to fight it.  For the basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible of a final military solution.  While we will long require the services and admire the dedication and commitment of the fighting men of this country, neither our strategy nor our psychology as a nation, and certainly not our economy, must become permanently dependent upon an ever-increasing military establishment.

There is no single slogan that you can repeat to yourself in hard days or give to those who may be associated with you.  In times past, a simple phrase, "54-40 or Fight" or "To make the world safe for democracy", - all that was enough.  But the times, the weapons, and the issues are now more complicated than ever."

President Kennedy concluded:

"Eighteen years ago today, Ernie Pyle, describing those tens of thousands of young men who crossed the "ageless and indifferent" sea of the English Channel, searched in vain for a word to describe wheat they were fighting for.  And finally he concluded that they were at least fighting for each other.

You and I leave here today to meet our separate responsibilities, to protect our nation's vital interests by peaceful means if possible, by resolute action if necessary, and we go forth confident of support and success because we know that we are working and fighting for each other and for all those men and women all over the globe who are determined to be free."

And now 20 years later what do we learn from the sentiments of these eminent men?  I don't know how you would answer that question, but for me they remind us that the struggle for freedom around the world is an on-going process.  For many, the Second world War is not over - Berlin is not free.  The Korean War is not over - our troops still guard the passes.  The Vietnam war is not over - the refugees still wash up at sea and some of the dead lie still unburied.  There is still much work for us to do before St. Paul's vision of the "glory which shall be revealed" can come to pass.  As Tolstoy observed, "God has laid on man the burden of being free", and we have become heirs of that weighty global task.

The title page of the 1962 Howitzer recalled the centennial of the War Between the States with the words of another President who served during an equally unpopular war, but a war whose goals were likewise directed by the quest for justice and freedom.  In the first few pages of the '62 Howitzer we read these words from Abraham Lincoln's address at Gettysburg in November of 1863:

"It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.  That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain........."

In General George S. Patton's account of World War II, War As I Knew It, General Patton spoke of the legacy he left behind:

"My sword I give to him that will succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it.  My works and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who now will be my rewarder.  So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side....."

Let us be grateful this morning for the legacy that these members of the Class of 1962 left behind at such a costly price, and let us resolve by our devotion to the best ideals we've heard, we've recalled, we've known that they shall not have died in vain.

CLOSING PRAYER:

Almighty God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, and no strength known but the strength of love, bless the spirits and the families of these men whom we honor today.  Support us in times of strife and in times of peace, and grant that the day may come when nations my find their security in perfect justice and compassion and war will be known no more.

                                                                                                                                                                            Amen