 The DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware, makers of better things for better living through chemistry, presents the Cavalcade of America. Tonight, the Long Gray Line, the story of West Point, through 150 years. Our star, Cornel Wilde. Today is commencement day at West Point. Again this year, as for generations past, the Corps of Cadets has gathered about the pedestal of a statue in the southwest corner of the plain, and the songs of the Cadet Choir have echoed back from the Hudson Highlands. As West Point is of today, recall with reverence the Long Gray Line of those who have climbed the hill and walked the plain before them. The statue's pediment bears a simple inscription. It reads, Colonel Thayer, father of the Military Academy. The year is 1817. Brevet Major Sylvainus Thayer, newly appointed superintendent of the Young and Struggling Academy, has arrived at the point. At the top of the long steep hill up from the river, he meets the man he is to replace. Good evening, Captain Potridge. My hand, sir. No. Well then, Captain, you are reporting to me, Brevet Major Thayer. Let me remind you, this is an engineer post. Rank within the Corps of Engineers is substantive. Your Brevet Field Rank is of no account here. Could I hardly talk? I rank you, sir. Let's have that understood. Now, what's your business? I have a message for you, Captain, from Brigadier General Swift. Here it is. On receipt, you will deliver the command of the post of West Point. Preposterous. Preposterous. Me, superseded. Never, sir. Never. Good day to you, sir. May I congratulate you, Major, on your forbearance with old Futer. With Captain Potridge, sir. I prefer not to make a stormy beginning, Lieutenant. Quietly, it does it. Now that the gentleman has been taken in charge by the War Department, we can get to about our business. May I see the entrance examination records for the current year? There are no records, sir. What? And no examinations. Old Pute begging your pardon, sir. He decided everything. We have one cadet here who's only 11 years old. 11? Yes, sir. And another one nearly 40. That one has one arm and a wife up a new bird. Old Pute was fond of him. This is outrageous, Lieutenant. Outrageous. Yes, sir. The cadets are graduating when they please, sir, if Old Pute approves. If he doesn't approve, they don't stay long. You will call him Captain Potridge, Lieutenant, until and unless a court martial decides differently. We shall have order here, Lieutenant. Strict order. Discipline shall be the core of our new system. Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir. Lieutenant, I have just returned for tour of the military schools of Europe. I've seen the lowest steam in which American military men are held abroad. By heaven, sir, we'll change that. We'll build here a school founded on a rock of discipline, nourished by scientific learning and exalted in a philosophy of honor. Duty, honor, country. That shall be our watchword. In his long years at West Point, Sylvainus Thayer turned an academic shambles into the first and finest engineering school on the American continent. Here he shaped four generations of cadets into builders and soldiers, imbued with his own ideals, duty, honor, country. He was the first of our great teachers of the art of victory. Sylvainus Thayer. We sons of today, we salute you. You sons of an earlier day. We follow those orders behind you where you have pointed the way. And the second great teacher, Dennis Hart Mohan, son of an Irish immigrant carpenter, small, sickly, a wisp of a man constantly ill in the sub-zero Highland winters, Dennis Hart Mohan, mentor of Captain's Courageous. The year is 1841, just past a century ago. Place, a West Point classroom. A section reciting in trigonometry has an unexpected visitor. Now, gentlemen, I want you to colonel my hat. Take, take, seat, gentlemen. It is a pleasure, sir. Come in. Come in. It's a nuisance and you know it. Oh, go right on with your recitation. Let me take your cloak, colonel. Oh, no, no. Seems I'm always cold. Matter of fact, that's why I dropped in. My classes are over, but I couldn't quite head into that mountain wind and fight my way home. Now that you're here, sir, I wonder if you wouldn't care to say a few words to the section. Very well. I'll make a complete nuisance of myself. Gentlemen, these are second-year men, Captain. Yes, sir. Gentlemen, you will not have the excruciating pleasure of attending my own lectures for another year. If you're here another year. Now, I'd not gain say the importance of trigonometry and such elementals. It's all well to measure all things. But ultimately, you're here to learn how to move armies in the field, in the presence of enemy forces. I, uh, resumed to teach this art. I wonder at my own presumption. Wonder too, uh, if any of you already read my textbook on the subject. Good, good. Uh, you there. You, sir, sitting alone in the back row. Me, sir? Uh, sorry, gentlemen, I don't know all your names as yet. Yes, you, sir. Can you tell me what is the chief element of success in strategy? Hello, Eddie, sir. Speed of movement. Correct, sir. Could you develop that theme a bit now? Yes, sir. As you have written, sir, no great success can be hoped for in war in which rapid movements do not enter. Even the very elements of nature seem to array themselves against the slow and overprudent general. Excellent. Solarity, gentlemen. Solarity. Never forget the word. Oh, the hour is up, eh? Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Class dismissed, gentlemen. Solarity. Well, Captain, they took me at me worried. Always the cadet who spoke with such, uh, such presence. Sam Grant, sir. Class of 43. Sam Grant, eh? That's what everyone calls him. I believe his full name is Ulysses Simpson Grant. Solarity. Blitzkrieg, the Nazis were to call it a century later when they stabbed into Poland. Mahan called it Solarity a hundred years ago, and he made it the heart and soul of American prowess and skill at arms. Dennis Hart Mahan, the teacher, never fought a battle, and he never went out of doors, they say, without an umbrella. But he rode with Stonewall Jackson's foot cavalry down the Shenandoah Valley. He planned with Lee at Chancellorsville, and his council prevailed before Vicksburg with General U.S. Grant. Though long dead, he was at San Juan Hill, at San Mille, too, and the dim, shell-racked forests of the Argonne. He fought with Eisenhower for Operation Overlord. He rode MacArthur's transport back to the Philippines. With Bradley, he conquered the deadly hedgerows at San Loh. And in his name, George Patton's iron column, slicing through the Falaise Gap, rode madly down the roads of France to reach for the distant Rhine. The Rhine, Celerity, and Dennis Hart Mahan. My little Macabre Cate of America, Cornel Wild is telling the story of the Long Gray Line. And the last man feels through his marrow the grip of your far-off foes. Thayer Mahan and Peter Smith-Mikey. This was the son of a Scottish mechanic who made West Point the home of engineering science. Graduated at the outbreak of the war between the states, he rose in three years to the field rank of Brigadier General. While still a first lieutenant in the regular army list. Returning to the point, he stayed to teach and to build for nearly 40 years. Peter Smith-Mikey. Soldier and scientist. The year is 1888, 64 years ago. The place, Colonel Mikey's office at the academy, on a warm day in early autumn. The teacher is revising his elements of hydro mechanics as... Dennis! Dennis, boy! How do I look, Dad? Well, son, you're dressed in gray, but... No, no, no, you don't look much like a kid. That's pulling that midsection, boy. Yes, sir. Do you remember Sylvainer Thayer's rule? Uh, display the chest, draw on the cooperation, draw the chin in perpendicular to the chest, hold the hands down at such a seam of the pantaloons and take care not to bend the elbows. Keep the shoulders back and keep the feet at an angle of 45 degrees. How's this? It's better, lad. It's better. But you were four years ago. Now, you, uh, you wanted to talk with me? Yes, Dad. How about football? Football? That English nonsense? Well, this is the new game, sir. We played it at Lawrenceville last year. This is not Lawrenceville, boy. Well, uh, they're playing this new game at Princeton and Rutgers, too. Civilian colleges have time for such capabilities. We do not. I, uh, hear they've been practicing at Annapolis, sir. Oh, they have, have they? Yes, sir. And, well, sir, we compete for grades, and it's supposed to be good for us. Why not in games, too? Oh, very well, uh, take it up with General Park and the academic board. But in my day, we got along well enough with Royne on the river. Times changed, Dad. Do they, Dennis? Do they? Well, on a fine Indian summer day like this, time seems to me to stand still here among the old gray towels. Or rather, all the times are mixed up together into one time. The hills behind us flatten out into one dimension, like a, like a backdrop in a stage play. And time narrows down to a single split second. Yes. I think I know what you mean, Dad. All right. And old Sylvainus is, is still handing out demerits in his basement office over yonder. And you might bump into Jackson or Grant or Lee in any sallyport. And Dennis Mahan, why, he's wheezing up the hill right now, home for a sale on the river. Hey, I don't know what he'd say about this football kickin. In this new game, Dad, you, you run with the ball. Old Mahan would probably figure out new ways to run with it, from the sidelines. Well, I suppose it can't do any harm. But son, never lose sight of why you're here. Times can't change that. Dennis Mahan named his son for Sylvainus there. I named you for Dennis Mahan. You see, things run together here in a cord of life without a break. And the strands of the cord are beauty, honor, country. Navy won the first football game in 1890, 24 to nothing. But Army, captained by Dennis Mahan, Mikey, won the second game, 32 to 16. High on the hilltop, there's a stadium now named for Dennis, Mikey Stadium. It is a few years later, there's a little war on down in Cuba, the war with Spain. We are once more in Colonel Mikey's office. I came, sir, as soon as I heard about your son, William, my deepest sympathy, sir. Aye, aye, thank you. It was pneumonia. They could do nothing. I'm, uh, I'm writing out to Dennis. You have been spared, Dennis Colonel. You must hang on to the... Aye, I do, I do. We're all proud of him. His record in Cuba is superb, sir. Aye, he learned his lesson well here at the academy. Uh, come in. A message, sir, from the ward department. From the ward department? Here, let me see it. Here it is, sir. No. What is it? Here you... You read it, Colonel. We regret to inform you that your son, First Lieutenant Dennis Mahan Mikey, has been killed in action at San Juan Hill. Peter Smith Mikey died some months later on February 16th, 1901. The class of Ort 1 was graduated on the morning of the 18th. And to a man, the class remained that afternoon to follow Mikey to his grave. The last of the great triumvirate, Thayer Mahan Mikey, was gone. But the cord with three strands, duty, honor, country, was unbroken. The long gray line would go marching on. They are here in closely assemblage, The man of the car long dead. And our hearts are standing, attention, While we wait for their passing tread. These were three great teachers of the art of victory. There were and have been many more. And what of those who were taught and learned well the lesson? They march past now. We hear their ghostly tread. And their voices, as all times melt and merge into one time. How can we call out the names and count off by the numbers when the numbers are so great? We'll try, at least, with the endless column passes. George Ronan, class of 1811, the first West Pointer killed in action at a wilderness fort where Chicago now stands. George W. Whistler, 1819, pioneer railroad builder. Let him stand for all the West Pointers who forged steel bands across the continent. Edgar Allen Poe, that most melancholy cadet. Henry Dupont, manufacturer. James Abbott McNeil Whistler, artist and wit. Son of the railroad builder. And all the great fighting names. The general offices. Sherman, Sheridan, Beauregard, Pickett, Polk, and Jubal Early, Jefferson Davis, 1828, McClellan Burnside, Hooker, and Mead. Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, class of 1846. Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees. And Andrew S. Rowan, 81, who carried a message to Garcia. Blackjack Pershing, Liggette, March and Bullard, Hap Arnold, Buckner, Patton, McNair. So the high command goes by. But for every star or eagle in this march past, a thousand shoulders carry short gold bars. These are the platoon leaders passing now. And the company commanders expendable in every army since Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho. Victory port, sir. All the canoneers are killed. Can you spare me another clue, sir? And two more guns. That was Lieutenant John P. J. O'Brien of O'Brien's Battery at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico. The perishing, imperishable subaltern. Those who pass now are the men who take nameless but numbered hills and die in the taking. These are the flyers into the flak. The flak that was never predicted. These are the men who straighten out in the glare of star shells certain slightly annoying salience in the regimental front. Hello. Hello, Brigade Command. Three prisoners, sir. And all from the same Bavarian lot there regiment. Thank you, sir. Yes, we lost one officer. A Lieutenant, sir. Lieutenant, Captain, these are the churs out with tails well chewed in turn. These are the men who were on the right spot by the map and the clock. When the barrage came down, some 30 yards too close to the trench. The men who captured not cities but machine gunness will lead the platoon on point to cross the unswept minefield to wait in the moonless dark for the bonsai charge. Hello. Hello, this is Binker Company, sir. I guess we're where we're supposed to be, but we need stretcher bearer, the captain headed, sir. These are the men who have done the dirty work of command in the filthy business of war for 150 years, the men who were trained for the necessary task at West Point. No need to go back to Buena Vista or Chancellor'sville. Or San Juan Hill, or the Argonne, or Saipan, or the H. Rose of Normandy. This line of marches goes longer now, day by day. Let these three stand for the many hundreds. Lieutenant John Trent, class of 1950, Captain of Football, 1949, killed in action in Korea. Lieutenant George Hannon, class of 1950, Distinguished Service Cross, killed in action in Korea. Lieutenant Samuel Corson, class of 1949, Congressional Medal of Honor, killed in action in Korea. I'll thanks the Cornell Wild and the Cavalcade players for tonight's story, The Long Gray Line. Tonight's DuPont Cavalcade was written by George H. Faulkner and based on material from where they have trod and men of West Point by Colonel R. Ernest DuPuis, USA, retired. Original music was composed by Arden Cornwell, conducted by Donald Boris. The program was directed by John Zoller. With Cornell Wild, you heard Stott's Cutsworth as Thayer, Richard Purdy as Mahan, Mercer McLeod as Mikey, and the Don Craig Kors. This is Cy Harris speaking. Next week, The DuPont Cavalcade will present the story of America's first woman pilot. Be sure to listen to Daughter with Wings, starring John Caulfield. The DuPont Cavalcade of America came to you tonight from the Velasco Theater in New York City and is sponsored by the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. Makers of better things for better living, through chemistry. Tonight, it's Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator on NBC.