The Counter-deception Blog

Happy Veterans Day. I ask you to remember them, and what we ask them to do, and to keep faith with one another.

Remarks on 11-11-01: Angels and the Last Best, Hope of Earth

Colonel Frank Stech, USAR ret.

Wars are always, in Lincoln’s perfectly chosen word, astounding. They produce results that we can hardly imagine when they start. Wars are always wars, good for destroying things that must be destroyed, as in 1864 or 1944, but useless for doing anything more, and no good at all for doing cultural work: saving the national honor, proving that we’re not a second-rate power, avenging old humiliations, demonstrating resolve, or any of the rest of the empty vocabulary of self-improvement through mutual slaughter. ADAM GOPNIK, "THE BIG ONE," The New Yorker, August 31, 2004.

Luke 20: [Jesus said…] Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels…

Last summer Father Michael asked me to make a few remarks on Armistice Day about the military and faith. First, let me ask those who are veterans of service to stand. Those of us who are sitting should thank those who stand for their service. Those of us who are standing should thank those who are sitting for being there for us as we served, and for providing us the homes we all wanted to come back to, no matter where we served. Thank you all.

The Great War, whose end we commemorate today, began in 1914 when terrorists assassinated a ruler and his wife. Europe exploded, after forty years of stability. The depth of hatreds among nations, whose leaders were direct relatives of each other, is still stunning to me almost 90 years later. The Great War that ended at the 11th hour of 11^th day of the 11th month of 1918, lasted more than four bloody years and destroyed tens of millions of people. Rather than the war to end all wars, as Woodrow Wilson called it, the First World War caused the Second World War, and was nearly a war to end all sanity.

Truly we should celebrate the Armistice, as we should celebrate the end of every war. None should celebrate the beginning of any war. [And we do well to examine most carefully the causes and beginnings of every war.] Few events in history could have done more to challenge faith than the wars of the 20th Century. When Michael suggested it, this seemed an easy assignment. Today, I feel I was a foolish optimist. Then, I was looking back at the 20th Century and seeing the bloodiest century in human history. Looking forward to the 21st Century, what I saw seemed to promise this century would be far brighter than the last. I told my financial advisor that I thought the next decades would see growth unlike anything in world history. The only thing that could prevent it, I told him, was if some madmen screwed it up.

On September 11, some madmen screwed it up.

That made me look back to the darkest days of this nation; almost 150 years ago. When Abraham Lincoln delivered his first inaugural address this country was itching to tear itself apart. Lincoln asked the country to abandon the war-mongering, the bellicose threats, the calls for separation. Imploring his fellow-citizens to unite around common

ideals, Lincoln appealed to what he called “the better angels of our nature.”[ 1]  After September 11, it became very hard for me, for most of us, I suppose, to see clearly “the better angels of our nature.” My struggle to find some bright icons of faith to show you caused me to look back to the times that tried the soul of our most Biblical and saintly president, and to seek faith among the “killer angels.”

Just about every officer in an Army uniform since the Vietnam War has read Michael Shaara’s 1973 novel The Killer Angels,[2] the story of Gettysburg. If you have never been to Gettysburg, you should go. This time of year it is particularly beautiful. For three days in 1863, 160 thousand Americans fought a desperate battle at Gettysburg that left one third,

51 thousand, Confederate and Union soldiers dead, wounded, or missing. In the Civil War, two percent of the population of this country died, over 600 thousand. But to put that into perspective, in a single battle along the River Somme in 1916, over twice that many German, French, and British soldiers died. The wars of the 20th Century put all others to shame, or rather, put all to shame.

Army officers read The Killer Angels because of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, formerly professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College, who took command of the 20th Maine Regiment one week before Gettysburg. On the second day of the battle, the 20th Maine was given Little Round Top to defend and hold the extreme left flank of the Union line. Chamberlain’s commander told him, “You are the end of the line. The Army stops here.” If the Rebels made it past the 20th Maine, they could wipe out the Union Army, and that could wipe out the Union.

As more and more Rebel soldiers charged Little Round Top, the 20th Maine ran out of bullets. Without ammunition, unwilling to retreat, Chamberlain ordered his men to “Fix bayonets” and they charged, throwing themselves down the hill onto the Rebels. The Confederates, caught by surprise, surrendered. The victory was costly, half of Chamberlain’s regiment were killed or wounded, over 300 man. At end of the war, at Appomattox Court House U. S. Grant asked Chamberlain to take the surrender salute of Robert E. Lee. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, winner of the Medal of Honor for Little Round Top, is the U.S. Army’s model of military leadership. But today I tell you his tale as one of a leadership of faith, rather than of courage.

In Shaara’s novel, the Regimental Sergeant of the 20th Maine, SGT Kilrain, shared his views on the nature of man with his Colonel. Chamberlain, the pensive, philosophical idealist, believed every man’s soul held the Divine Spark. Chamberlain, whose brother fought with him in the same Regiment, believed all men are truly brothers. Chamberlain saw the great fight as one of freeing slaves so that all of us would be free. He told his men, when you come down to it, we are fighting for each other.

SGT Kilrain was a realist, who came to America from Ireland, escaping another form of oppression. Kilrain fought the landed aristocracy, “So,” he tells Chamberlain, “I’ll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved.” Kilrain believed the only true aristocracy is one of talent and virtue, and that some men were worth no more than dogs. And, from

what Kilrain had already seen in the war, if men were inspired by angels, as Chamberlain believed, then Kilrain thought they must be “killer angels.”

The Civil War was a clash of cultures and perhaps today the war on terror is also a clash of cultures. Some think so. America’s founding was a clash of cultures; a 1826 novel described The Last of the Mohicans, and they were not the only tribe wiped out in that clash. Many today in the world do not see us as brothers, and it is hard to see the Divine

Spark in those who vow to kill us indiscriminately.

When Lincoln was assassinated, the author of the epic novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville, wrote the poem The Martyr:

Good Friday was the day Of the prodigy and crime,

When they killed him in his pity, When they killed him in his prime

Of clemency and calm--When with yearning he was filled

To redeem the evil-willed, And, though conqueror, be kind;

But they killed him in his kindness, In their madness and their blindness,

And they killed him from behind.

There is sobbing of the strong, And a pall upon the land;

But the People in their weeping Bare the iron hand;

Beware the People weeping When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood--The father in his face;

They have killed him, the Forgiver--The Avenger takes his place,

The Avenger wisely stern, Who in righteousness shall do

What the heavens call him to, And the parricides remand;

For they killed him in his kindness, In their madness and their blindness,

And his blood is on their hand.

There is sobbing of the strong, And a pall upon the land;

But the People in their weeping Bare the iron hand;

Beware the People weeping When they bare the iron hand.

In his Annual Message to Congress on December 1, 1862, after the Civil War had begun, Abraham Lincoln said:

“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We …will be remembered in spite of ourselves. … The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. …The world knows we do know how to save it. We---even we here---hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free---honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.”

We must believe what Lincoln knew. We must hold the faith of Chamberlain. We must look at our enemies, who “In their madness and their blindness, killed from behind.” We cannot escape history, we will be remembered in spite of ourselves, and the fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

We must look at each other, and we must look at ourselves. We must have Lincoln’s faith and Chamberlain’s faith to see, beyond the killer angels, the Divine Spark and the better angels of our nature.

Or we shall meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.