We Boomers grew up singing “Where have all the Flowers Gone,” as good an anti-war song as there ever was. It was the early ’60s and my father, then a lt. colonel in the Army, reacted strongly to his eight offspring’s innocent warbling. He gave us a lecture we’ll never forget, all about military preparedness and saving lives. He knew first hand. He had just graduated from the Citadel when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and he was sent to war in the Pacific. Instead of a real gun and ammunition, he was issued a non-functioning wooden rifle and no ammunition. The nation was unprepared for war and he was sent to fight without arms.
But at least he knew why. His father, for whom he was named, Major John R. Fawcett, a veteran of the Mexican War and World War I, gave speeches in his native Savannah almost every Armistice Day. The message was invariably a version of: ” Our nation is Not Prepared.”
On Armistice Day, 1938, sounding like a combination of Patrick Henry and George Washington, he said:
War! War! War! Mankind has fought from the days of wooden clubs and stone axes down to the present time of aerial bombs and submarine ships and mines. Mankind is going to continue to fight.
Peace! Peace! Peace! We cry peace but there is no peace. In man’s ruthlessness, cities are destroyed, industry, art and commerce cease, civilizations are wiped out, the aged and innocent women and children killed, maimed, left destitute and homeless. For us there can be no safe course to follow but to keep free of foreign entanglements and maintaining, at all times, an efficient and adequate national defense on land and sea.
These were my grandfather’s thoughts about the need for a strong national defense, but they are not that different from my son’s. Billy is a first lieutenant in the Army with plans to get out as soon as possible. According to him, the Army is not a serious institution. Its purpose is not national defense. Weapons break and are not replaced. Ammunition is scarce. Pilots do not have fuel to maintain adequate training. Since the Gulf War, we have allowed our military to lose strength and preparedness.
Is there a relationship between attacks like December 7th and September 11th and the decline of military preparedness? My grandfather the major thought so – my father, the colonel, thinks the same. So does his grandson, the lieutenant.
If Major Fawcett were here today, he might shake his head and ironically paraphrase the chorus of “Where have all the Flowers Gone,” wondering sadly, when will we ever learn?
If we are very lucky, the strength and determination of President Bush to punish the perpetrators of last Tuesday’s attack could result in a great scurrying by sponsoring states to de-sponsor Osama bin Laden and his ilk. They could even cooperate to turn terrorists over to justice. With no country on which to declare war, a real war could yet be averted. But, if it is, God help us if we forget again the lesson we should have re-learned last Tuesday.
The major concluded his 1938 Armistice Day speech with these stirring words – words which we might echo today:
Peace in the world will never rest in Leagues of Nations, nor in Disarmament Compacts, nor in treaties nor agreements. Not until the nations of the earth put aside all hatred, envy and malice and banish greed, lust for power and bigotry. When the governors of the nations shall cease to array class against class, sect against sect and race against race. When the nations of the earth shall rule by, live by and deal with each other by the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, then, and not till then, can a sad and almost destroyed world ever have a universal and lasting peace. Until that time, let us strive to make our land ready.
Let us by our precept and example show we are ready to be friends with the world, but we are equally ready to protect our country, our people and our free institutions to the last dollar of our wealth, and to the last drop of our blood.
