 The traditions and achievements of the United States Army form a proud heritage, whose roots are in the devotion of free men to an ideal. In defense of that ideal, and of the nation which embodies it, the American Fighting Man has always stood ready and able to give whatever has been necessary. Country is good to look at, is rich land, plump with cities and farms, brimming with the treasures of the earth. The wilderness is harness, tamed to man's use, every man's, sustaining and enriching a nation already great and growing greater. The country is the soldier's memorial, it is the land he won, the nation he made and saved. For this nation was born in battle, purged in blood, made secure by sacrifice. It was the soldier who fought the oppressor and invader, the hostile Red Skinner, the Marauder and the Woodpeed Tyrant. The soldier struggled in cold and mud and filth, when fighting meant to wait. The crawl and grind of years of slow campaigns, when the measure of a soldier was less his bravery in battle than his ability to endure. He endured, but not for glory or personal reward. Sometimes it was for a patriot's dream set afire by an ideal. Sometimes it was love for a flag, a leader, each other, the esprit of mutual confidence and devotion. Sometimes it was pride, the doing of a job that had to be done no matter what the price. The job has gone on for 200 years and with it the soldier. The uniform has changed with different generations, different wars, but he is the same American soldier who fought his country's battles for 200 years and who carries on today. There is one difference, one that makes him a better soldier. He has behind him the achievements and traditions of two centuries of struggle, the devotion and sacrifice, the blood and guts, the determination and pride, the gallantry and daring of many wars, scores of campaigns, hundreds of battles. The first soldier worthy of the name was the colonial militiamen. From plow and forge, work bench and desk, he rallied to the cry of danger. From these militia forces, the American army was born. It wasn't much of an army. These men were green, undisciplined, untried in the rigors of war. Their weapons were clumsy, but they had a marksman's eye. They would fight to be free from oppression. They had a leader, a great and dedicated man, a rock of courage, steadfast and firm. Following him, the army plunged into the longest war in its history. There were disastrous battles and defeats, Long Island, White Flames, Brandywine. There was hardship and suffering, Morristown, Valley Forge. There were also great victories, Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, Kingsmouth, Cowpens, Yorktown, the greatest prize of all, liberty. The continental soldier coming at last through his long ordeal to victory established an undying tradition for all the great armies to come. The tradition of the citizen soldier who takes up arms when his country's freedom is threatened, fighting doggedly against seemingly hopeless odds, losing many battles, but somehow never losing a war. By his victory over the professional soldiers of the greatest empire of the day, the American had proved to the world and to himself that he was a first-class fighting man. He had shown great gifts of stamina and courage. He had found in times of grave need, he could produce great leaders to help him. He knew that courage and stamina in the soldier were not enough, that the soldier to survive and win in battle must have training and discipline as well, just as there must be justice and respect for human rights to strengthen his will to fight. One of the earliest steps in putting this hard-won knowledge to good account was the founding of the Military Academy at West Point to train professional officers. West Point's first graduates were blooded in the War of 1812, when the descendants of the Continental Army marched to defend the infant nation which their fathers had brought to life. Defeats and victories alike, battles such as Chippewa and New Orleans, showed the mettle of this new generation of the army and proved that the American soldier of any day or age could stand up to the world's best. It was during the Battle of Chippewa that the British commander watched the advancing American line contentiously, for its men wore the rough grey coats issued those untrained citizen soldiers he had easily whipped before. As the ranks advanced steadily through murderous grape shop, he realized his mistake and cried out, those are regulars by God. It was Winfield Scott's brigade of infantry, drilled through the previous winter into a crack outfit. It drove the British from the battlefield. The Revolutionary War gave us a flag. The War of 1812 gave us a song, our national anthem. The foreign foal was banished from our shores forever. The army still had work to do as the white settler moved westward to occupy the great forests and plains. The native Indian, a deadly antagonist, fought with cunning stealth and savagery to stay the white man's relentless surge into the west. The soldier became an Indian fighter. The first job of the regular army after the Revolution was to make the wilderness safe for the great wave of settlers that began to surge westward. The soldier led the way as scout and guard, pioneering for the pioneers. The Indians struck back. From Wisconsin to Florida the frontier blazed into fire reaction. The soldier learned to fight in the forest, meeting the Indian on his own ground, fighting in the Indian manor. Under able meters the army met and outfought the finest warriors of the aroused Indian nations in a series of savage wilderness battles. Paul and Timber, Tipper Canoe, Horseshoe Bend, Bad Axe River, and Okeechobee Swamper. At each of these pitched battles the red skin was decisively defeated and the whole of the east from the Atlantic to the Mississippi was free of the threat of arrow and tomahawk. Meanwhile other soldiers had plunged into the wilderness of the far west. Captain Merriweather Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark followed the Missouri and Columbia Rivers to the Pacific. Lieutenant Zebulun Pike traced the headwaters of the Mississippi and later discovered the peak in Colorado that has made his name eternal. Shortly after Texas had been annexed by the United States a dispute arose with Mexico over the boundary between that country and Texas. War between the United States and Mexico erupted as a result. The soldiers of Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott forced a numerically superior and doggedly fighting foe into retreat on his own soil and finally routed him from his capital city war. Once again an outnumbered American army had shown astonishing boldness and fighting heart, speed of movement, and accuracy of fire, and uncommon ability to undergo hardships. The young giant of the Republic grew rapidly under the jealous protection of the army, tiny in numbers but formidable in spirit. But the American soldiers' greatest ordeal lay just ahead of him. The bloodies struggled to preserve the unit. No war ever tried him more severely and in no war did he rise to the challenge more magnificently. The grim stubbornness of Vicksburg and Chickamauga, the fanatical fury of the wilderness campaign, the incredible courage of Fredericksburg, the civil war proved for all time that great fighting qualities were the attributes not just of picked truths but of the average American soldier. War produced as large a number of dazzling leaders and great generals whose tactics and strategy were to influence the officers of still greater wars to come. War had produced as many feats of valor for which Congress devised a new and supreme award, the Medal of Honor. Other precedents were made, other traditions created. The first large scale combined operations between army and navy was carried out successfully when the federal fleet joined with the Union army to clear the Mississippi River of Confederate control. Finally the bloody civil war was over. The great armies vanished overnight in demobilization. But for the tiny army that was left, numbering only 38,000 men in 1866, depleted to 20,000 by 1878, for this army of far older civil war still went on. A bitter, dogged conflict that could truly be called a hundred years' war, the war between Indians and white men. Neglected during the war between the states, the Indians beyond the Mississippi had become bolder and stronger. 300,000 braves roamed the mountains and plains of the far west, murdering, pillaging, and terrorizing the settler at will. Cheyennes, Comanches, Sue, Hughes, Napercay, the Chauchonis, and the deadliest of all, the Apaches. To crush these well-led mounted hordes, the Shrunken army could spare less than 3,000 men. Yet this handful of soldiers and their pitifully few successors did the job. Although it took 30 years and more than 200 pitched battles, underfade, exposed to frightful hardship and privation, and neglected, often spurned by their countrymen, they carried on their great work, carving out of the wilderness settlements that were later to become cities. Made strong by their efforts, was their pride in their flag, their leaders, their unit, and their profession of arms. History has never known finer fighting men than these soldiers of the west. The crisis of the Spanish-American war rushed upon us suddenly, but with neglect of the army cost heavily as it always has. The large force of citizen soldiers that was rushed to Cuba paid a heavy price for skimpy training and equipment. But the volunteers had fighting zeal. The expeditionary force that was built up around the small but highly trained regular army quickly liberated Cuba from the grip of Spanish terror. During the Battle of San Juan Hill at Santiago, Cuba, 1 July 1898, Lieutenant John H. Parker, in command of the Gatling gun detachment, moved his men and guns abreast of the infantry and opened fire. Parker believed that his guns, which normally played a defensive role in battle, could be of decisive importance in the attack, by giving fire superiority to the infantry when most needed. This was the United States Army's first use of close support machine guns in the attack, and was a decisive factor in the capture of San Juan Hill. The United States was established as a world power. The American flag was now planted overseas in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines. As usual, it was the Army, again drastically reduced in size that was called on to keep the peace and build up these lands, to defend American lives and property as far away as China. These grueling, seemingly endless police actions scattered the Army's slender strength halfway around the world. Always the soldier was builder and healer as well as policeman. He finished one of the construction marvels of the century, the Panama Canal. He discovered the cause of the tropical scourge of yellow fever and waged a successful war to stamp it out. He came to the rescue and sucker of the distressed civilian population during such great catastrophes as the San Francisco earthquake, the Mississippi floods. But above and beyond everything else, he was his country's shield when the country was in peril. At the citizen soldiers of this nation plunged into war on such a vast scale. Never before did the fighting character of the American soldier trained to attack by a fighting commander who knew how to build on the natural will to win at the Americans have such a decisive effect on world history. Cantini, Chateau Thierry, Reem, Samuel, the boys of Pershing's expeditionary force smashed the best of the Kaiser's army repeatedly, finally routing him in the great and final offensive of the Mews-Argonne that brought the war to an end. Pershing proved, despite the skepticism of alive military leaders, that American military genius has built around a war of fire and movement, that victory lies in attack. This aggressive tradition was fostered in the post-war army, although it had been slashed to ribbons by an economy-minded nation. Despite an appalling lack of funds, the army was streamlined for more firepower and faster movement. The technique of airborne assault was developed. Perron's semi-automatic rifle became the basic infantry weapon. The self-propelled gun appeared. The vast new array of armoured monsters whose sole purpose was to carry on the great cavalry tradition of attack. It was providential for this country that its army had schooled itself rigorously in the spirit and tactics of the offensive. When the fascist nations lost for conquest, enveloped the world in flames and brought us, the army found that it had to carry the fight to a stubborn, powerful enemy in a series of amphibious landings and grand assaults around the world. The American soldier in first wars had undergone incredible suffering. But nothing like the variety of hardships he endured in World War II. He sweated through the steaming heat of the jungles of the Pacific. He was scorched by the burning sands of North Africa and the torrid lowlands of Iran, foes in the icy winds of the Italian mountains, and in the winter storms of France and Germany. He endured and fought and inspired by great fighting leaders attacked and attacked again until victory was attained. In this great war in which our whole nation sprang to arms, the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and daring that made the American unique among the world's peoples came to full flower when he assumed the role of citizen soldier. The army fought on a scale and with inefficiency hitherto undreamed of, devising new weapons, new techniques of assault and supply, new procedures and drugs for the care of the soldiers sick and wounded. The army had become a colossus, borrowing from every field of human endeavor and helping to create new ones. Yet as ever, the army's bone marrow, its blood, its nerves, remained the citizen soldier. Now more than ever, the army needed the individual skill and know-how, brains, and imagination to carry on in an age where warfare had become increasingly complex and technical. It needed his patience and cheerfulness to discharge its massive burdens of occupation and rehabilitation. But above all else, it needed his fighting heart. When a new menace to peace erupted, when Communist imperialism stabbed into South Korea in 1950, it was the American soldier who, despite great suffering, held the enemy at bay. It was the American soldier who fought the Russians through the aggressor back across the border. Korea confirmed the eternal qualities of the American soldier. He told him what every combat veteran knows, but what every fighting man must find out for himself. But no matter how complex the machines of war are, how deadly its arms, it is the soldier in the machine, the soldier behind the gun and on the ground who wins battles. And the American soldier wins because he fights to win. Because he has the will to fight. This spirit echoes in the motos and fighting cries of 200 years. I'll try, sir. Brave rifles. You've been baptized in fire and blood and come out steel. When in doubt, fight. All who are brave, follow me. Keep up the fire. But for yet, we are here, his oldest traditions, to recognize this fighting heart. It has hallowed since the days when he founded the Order of the Purple Heart. It was generously carried on in Korea in citations and decorations. In the award of battlefield commissions in the constant reminder to every soldier that like so many great leaders of past and present, he too has unlimited opportunity to rise from the ranks. The American soldier is under arms on every rampart of the free world. Never was the burden on him heavier, the threat graver. Never more invincible. At his side stand the ghosts of countless regions of American citizens turned fighting men, whose answer to peril and hardship was fight. Fight to win. Spirit will never die. The accomplishments and traditions of American soldiers have made it immortal. But army, our country, our nation, our very eternal monument. To the great bridge and beyond, the strands which form the soldier's tapestry of valor and determination are unbroken. Spanning two centuries, the traditions and achievements of his army form the unique heritage of the individual American soldier and of the nation whose ideal of individual liberty he continues to serve.