Last night I went to the Army's 227th birthday party in Washington. I've been retired for 17 years — seems like only yesterday I was green — and I managed to lose contact over the years with nearly everyone I knew, so I didn't know a soul except for the couple we went with. Everyone, including the senior officers present, looked younger than I remembered. I'm not sure I was ever as physically fit as they are. The food was okay — catered food for 2000 people isn't going to be made with real gourmets — and the wine was good. The men were handsome and the women were beautiful. If their kids had been there, they'd have been above average. This was as it should be.
The Secretary of the Army, Tom White, was there, as was Gen. Eric Shinseki, chief of the Army Staff, and Miss Virginia USA. Entertainment was by the Army band and by the Army Soldiers' Show; I don't remember having a "Soldiers' Show" back in the paleolithic, and I wonder if any other army in the world has the resources to spend on a group devoted to singing and dancing. Seemed frivolous to me, but then, I don't have a sense of humor. Everybody else seemed to enjoy it, and I confess I did, too.
When the festivities began we toasted the President, our guests, our fallen comrades and the Army. When the evening was over we sang the Army song, "The Caissons Army Goes Rolling Along." I choked up both times, even though I never learned the words to the song and I never have been one for social gatherings.
There were ten people at our table, seated boy-girl, boy-girl. Charles and Tracy, our best friends, and the Little Woman and I made up one foursome. Next to us was another retired couple; he'd been an artilleryman; when he retired, I was a young fellow stationed in Okinawa, wondering if I really wanted to stay in the Army. Next to them was a young captain of engineers and his date. Next to them was a lieutenant colonel of armor and his wife; when I'd retired he'd been a junior officer, probably wondering if it was worth it to stay in. When I went out to smoke my pipe I met a lady — standing around, smoking a cigarette and watching the young fellows — whose husband had retired when I was in grade school. Then we both met a young fellow who had been in the Army less than a year.
Somehow we were all a part of the same "family": friends, co-workers, spouses, comrades, and sometimes grieving survivors, spreading all over the world and stretching back 227 years, to six companies of infantry the Continental Congress sent to Boston to thump the British. Happy birthday, Army. |