Duty Honor Country

Duty Honor Country - three famous words that mean a lot to the United States. Especially to our soldiers, therefore it is the motto of the U.S. Military Academy. Let’s learn what these three words mean and have meant to some of our most famous military leaders throughout the history of the United States of America. It is an interesting perspective to read how these words are used after one dedicates them to service for our country.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

“Duty Honor Country” adopted in 1802 as the motto of our U.S. Military Academy, summarizes all that our warriors aspire to serve. No matter whether the soldier was educated on the fields of Lexington and Concord, Parris Island or myriad other dusty uncomfortable barracks across our great land, Duty Honor Country is our defenders’ creed.

We wish no foreign conquest but only to live in peaceful commerce with the rest of the world. This is a land where the citizen is king and our highest officials but servants. Our citizen soldier has been an important source of burnishing the values on which we have thrived and is often its most eloquent spokesman.

At this time of year, I do this column to welcome back The Corps of Cadets at The Citadel. 2007 will see a record 700 plus knobs come through Lesegne Gate to learn The Citadel way that has marked its graduates for 165 years as worthy members of that Long Gray Line of our country’s defenders.

The Citadel Way, whether you end up in a military career or leading one of our civilian enterprises will change you. It will temper you into polished steel. It will teach you what is right and give you tools to assist you when confronted with life’s dilemma that what is right is not always easy. It remains, however, the right way, the way The Citadel and generations of its graduates before you have lived their lives and expect you to behave in providing your generation’s need for leadership in the challenges that surely will come.

You do not have to rely on my words to know this. Listen here to a conversation among the pantheon of our most respected warrior servants, conversing on our country’s needs. I am using as close to their actual words and still keep the flow.

Gen. Mark Clark: “All my life, both as a soldier and as an educator, I have been engaged in a search for a mysterious intangible. All nations seek it constantly because it is the key to greatness, sometimes to survival. That intangible is the electric and elusive quality known as leadership.”

Gen. Omar Bradley: Mark, Where are these men today? “The Nation today needs men who think in terms of service to their country and not in terms of their country’s debt to them.

Gen Eisenhower: Omar, you’re right. “When I donned this uniform, ever after, the expression The United States of America meant something different than it had ever before. From thereon it was the republic I was serving, not myself.”

Thomas Jefferson, “God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.”

Horatio Nelson & Robert E. Lee, chiming in together, “Duty—the sublimest word in the English language” Following which Lord Nelson says, “Thank God I have done my duty.” Horatio, you are right. “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself. Do your duty in all things. You should never wish to do less.”

General Marshall observes, “The soldier’s heart, the soldier’s spirit, the soldier’s soul, is everything. Unless the soldier’s soul sustains him, he cannot be relied on and will fail himself and his country in the end. National strength lies only in the hearts and spirits of men.”

Gen. Patton: George, that is true, but “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. The badge of rank which an officer wears on his coat is really a symbol of servitude to his men.”

Gen.DeGaulle: “It is, indeed, an observable fact that all leaders of men, whether as political figures, prophets, or soldiers, all those who can get the best out of others, have always identified themselves with high ideals.”

John Paul Jones: General, I agree. “I would lay down my life for America, but I cannot trifle with my honor.”

General Douglas MacArthur: Gentlemen, you are all right. “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.

“These are some of the things they [these words] do. 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, 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. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman…

“The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.

General Eisenhower concludes: “Leadership cannot be exercised by the weak. It demands strength—the strength of this great nation when its people are united in purpose, united in a common fundamental faith, united in their readiness to work for human freedom and peace: this spiritual and economic strength, in turn, must be reinforced in a still armed world by the physical strength necessary for the defense of ourselves and our friends.”

You are the inheritors of this wisdom, this strength. You are the new recruits to that Long Gray Line that has never let our country down. You come to us in a time of challenge but those from whom you have just heard did too. They have confidence that you will not fail. We have confidence that you will not fail. Your nation looks to you to lead us to a more settled times and tranquil waters. Welcome back, Cadets. God speed you on your way to meet the challenges ahead.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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