"The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, wanted by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen, then, 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 I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: duty, honor, country. Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the corps, and the corps, and the corps. I bid you farewell." - General Douglas MacArthur
Two years before he faded away in 1964, Douglas MacArthur made a final visit to West Point, where he had been superintendent, to deliver a farewell address. MacArthur had a flair for the dramatic, but he was a fearless soldier and gifted administrator. He was decorated 1 times for bravery during World War I, helped to defeat the Japanese in World War II, and then helped to transform Japan into a modern democracy.
