The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished ”“ tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, honor, country.”
”” General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, at the U.S. Military Academy, May 12, 1962