Four years later and the parades continue. Month after month the procession moves, and only the faces change.
Just when I thought I'd seen it all . . . .
Four years ago, our XO yelled out across the section for the first time, "C'mon, up, out. We have somewhere to be . . . NOW." Grumbling ensued. The normally cheery and relaxed XO, from whom none of us had ever heard so much as a muttered expletive, was having none of it. A few tried to stay at their desks, to cram in a little more work, loath to attend yet another promotion or retirement of somebody only vaguely recognized from the common areas. Few of us, yet, had been to combat this time around. The XO, to our shock and for the first time in our experience, became someone, or something, different that morning.
We went "somewhere." Sheepishly. Immediately. It was just after 1000.
That "somewhere" was literally just outside the door. My peers and I were planners and strategists on the Army G-3 Staff. Our Dilbert-like warren of cubicles in a large Pentagon room, led out to Corridor Three, one of the main hallways that reach from the outside to the inner courtyard of the building. We were about to witness a first, which is, by definition, historic.
Since the invention of the camera, the archives of military history have steadily and increasingly filled with images, frozen moments that, if the adage holds true, each capture what could take 1,000 words to describe. Many of those photos depict parades.
Cheering young ranks of volunteer enlistees still in their civilian clothes, in Paris, Berlin, and London, caught in the frenzy of xenophobia and nationalism, depict the confidence of July 1914. A generation later the image of broad ranks of men marching up Broadway under clouds of tickertape sets the endpoint of another war for many Americans. But there is one parade that may well never make it into the history books. It is, after all, a very small and private affair.
This parade, more of a processional really, is closed to the public. It is 330 feet long. There are no marching bands, no floats, and though military from end to end, there are no ranks or files, no sergeants dressing the line, no officers commanding, "Eyes . . . Right!" and rendering a salute. Honors there are, indeed, and aplenty, but they are rendered in the other direction. This confusing reversal is understandable when one knows a few more facts:
This event takes place in one of the major corridors of the Pentagon.
The "audience" is Army: majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels, some few sergeants, and civilian staff. Over the years the audience has changed, though the parade has not. Now almost every one of those lining the hallways, officers by the thousand, wears a patch on his right shoulder. While applauding and giving a greeting to a recognized member of the procession, we render a respect fully as profound as the original intent of the hand salute. Tears there are as well. Every. Damned. Time. This parade takes place every month. Sometimes more often.
Those moving down the corridor sometimes lack hands, arms, feet, or whole legs. Ten, twenty, then thirty, they roll, hobble, or walk as best they can, but rendering the hand salute is difficult when one lacks hands. These are our brothers, and some sisters, home from war and recovering at Walter Reed. They are here to receive our greeting, and dine with the generals. For many of us they represent more. Our applause deafens.
World War I British poet and infantryman Wilfred Owen called it "The Old Lie." The quote, extracted from Roman orator Horace, was not ironic in the first telling: "Dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori." In English this translates as, "It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country."
I am halfway between the two. It is not a lie, it is not the truth. I treasure my own service, and I honor that of the men with whom I have served. Yet I know, without any doubt, that it is not sweet to die. Nor is it sweet for my men to die. We are now beyond that age. But I am not moving the rest of the way down the path to madness that Owen walked until his own death on the Western Front, one short week before the Armistice. Death may be necessary, indeed it is the central element of our profession, but it is not sweet. No. It is not.
Four years later and the parades continue. Month after month the procession moves, and only the faces change. We have all, who line that corridor now, been to war. We know. Some who now applaud once walked or rolled down this same hall from within the parade. Our emotions and respect are informed thereof. We are thankful for those we see in Corridor Three. I have seen, with one year abeyance while elsewhere, too many of these now.
Lieutenant Colonel Bateman is an infantry officer assigned as the Army representative in the Office of Net Assessment. His most recent book is No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident.