Mr. Speaker, I just had the chance to read the speech given in October by Tom Brokaw, television journalist and former NBC news anchorman and managing editor of ``NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw,'' at the Association of the United States…
Mr. Speaker, I just had the chance to read the speech given in October by Tom Brokaw, television journalist and former NBC news anchorman and managing editor of ``NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw,'' at the Association of the United States Army, AUSA. He was presented with the association's highest award--the Marshall Medal, awarded annually to an individual who has exhibited ``selfless service to the United States of America,'' according to the association.
The AUSA Council of Trustees chose Brokaw to receive the 2005 George Catlett Marshall Medal and recognize him for his lifetime contributions as a journalist, reporter, editor, broadcaster and author. I share his address here and commend to our colleagues the speech by Mr. Brokaw, the author of The Greatest Generation, the story of Americans who came of age during the Great Depression and fought World War II, and went on to build America. I call attention to Mr. Brokaw's observations of the common sacrifices of the Greatest Generation during World War II and the comparison with today, as our men and women in uniform are fighting to defend our freedoms, ``we ask too few sacrifices at the civilian level.''
You know in my business, I'm often in settings where they
talk about stars. I'm seldom in a setting with so many stars,
that have been earned, not just assigned to them by some
gossip columnist, and it's a rare honor and a great privilege
for me to be with all of you tonight here on the dais and in
this great auditorium.
So many people have come up to me to say, on this occasion
and others, I love your book. When I set out to write it, I
had no idea of the richness of the journey that I was about
to embark on. It really began on the 40th anniversary of D-
Day, when I went to Normandy for a week to do a documentary
about that momentous military landing that really changed the
course of history. I thought, we'll have a good time, we'll
drink some wine, and maybe we'll drink a lot of wine, and
we'll have some good meals, and we'll hear some war stories.
And on the first day of filming, I walked down to the
beach, with two men from Big Red One, one of whom went on to
earn the Medal of Honor later. One was without legs that he
lost in later action. And as I looked at them, I realized
that Harry Garton and Gino Merli were the kinds of people
that I had known all my life. They were my schoolteachers and
ministers, the businessmen for whom I worked. Their wives
looked like the mothers of all my friends; they looked like
my parents' best friends. They were there in their
windbreakers, and as we walked onto Omaha Beach, they paused
at their first return and began very softly to remember what
it had been like that day.
And within about 20 minutes, I had undergone a
transformational experience, the likes of which I had not
known as a professional journalist. And their stories, and
the stories that I began to collect after that, resonated not
just with me, but with this country in a way that I could not
have anticipated. Now there have been some who have
challenged my declaration that this was the greatest
generation. My answer to them is, that's my story, and I'm
sticking to it.
But I believe the generation that came of age in the Great
Depression, when life was about sacrifice and deprivation,
about dropping out of school, not to buy a video game or a
car for yourself, but to put food on the table, when sharing
meant sharing a pair of shoes or a shirt or a jacket. They
didn't double date, they went three and four couples to a
car, to a movie that cost a dime, and went back to someone's
home at the end of the night to play the piano, and have
coffee and cake.
And they never gave up on their country, even though times
were difficult, and just when they were beginning to emerge
from those dark days economically, this country summoned them
to distant battlefields, across the Atlantic and across the
Pacific. And what the British military historian John Keegan
has called the greatest single event in the history of
mankind--World War II. They fought on six of the seven
continents, all the skies, and on all the seas and beneath
them as well, and won. Fifty million people had perished, and
nations had been realigned, and we were forced to face harsh
truths about the cruelties of mankind in the middle of the
20th century.
But they came home from all of that, and they gave us new
art and new science and new industry. A number of them
continued in the military. Those who did not, did not just
lay down their arms and say I've done by share. They went
back to their hometowns and their states, and they ran for
mayor and the school board and for the church board trustees.
They ran for Senator and for Congress, and they ran for
President of the United States, and they took their place in
the front ranks of public service.
And no one represented their leadership more profoundly, I
believe, than the man that you honor here tonight--George
Marshall--who I believe is the most single, underappreciated
20th century American, and one of the most underappreciated
Americans of all time.
A warrior, a diplomat, and a visionary. And so I am deeply
humbled by this award. And for those of you who only know it
from one side of the television screen, not the other, let me
just confirm what you're thinking--it's not easy for an
anchorman to express humility. Let me also say that I'm very
pleasantly surprised to know that I'm the first journalist to
receive this award.
I have some good news and some bad news for you.
Journalists and warriors come from the same DNA. I said this
first at the War College, and I thought that the colonels in
the audience were going to storm the stage. We like
unconventional lives. We can deal with authority, but we know
when to bristle about authority. We like living off the land.
We like catching the bad guys and holding them up for
appropriate punishment. And most of all, we're patriots, who
love our country. And the definition of patriotism for me is
love your country and always know that it can be better, and
that it is the obligation of every citizen to try to make it
better, every day.
On these occasions, I like to remind people that I've had
the privilege in the last two years, three years especially,
of working side by side, night after night, day after day,
both in this country and abroad, with three of your best--
General Wayne Downing, who is here tonight, General Monty
Meigs and General Barry McCaffrey. And I must say as a full
blown civilian, it gave me a certain amount of pleasure to
say to these four stars, okay men, listen up. We're coming
out
in 30 seconds, we've got a minute 30 to go--McCaffrey, don't
do all the talking, let Meigs in on this for awhile.
And they were thoroughly professional, and it was not only
a joy for me to work with them side by side, but it was a
great service to this country to have their expertise and
their candor and their truth-telling, as the war went on in
the early stages, and then after that.
Now it is sometimes an adjustment. During Operation Desert
Storm, I was joined at the desk at NBC, night after night,
hour after hour, by one of your great, great figures, the
late Colonel Harry Summers, who was a real expert on infantry
tactics, a plainspoken man, who kept his military bearing
even in a television studio. But about the fifth night of the
war, at about three o'clock in the morning, we were kind of
operating on fumes at this point, and I refuse on those
occasions to have a conventional meal; I said just keep
sending out plates of fresh food of some kind, that will keep
me going; I don't want to get bogged down with dinner; I've
got too many other things to worry about.
And finally about the 18th little dish of chopped fruit
arrived on my desk, and I couldn't even bear to look at it,
and I finally slid it across to Harry Summers. He looked down
at it for a long moment and he said, ``I don't know what's
happened to me. First I let them put hairspray and makeup on
me--now I'm eating fresh fruit.'' But we found a way to get
along.
Let me just take a little bit of your time, if I can, to
offer some adjurations on the profession that brings you here
tonight and our collective place in this society. A few
months ago, at a conference of billionaires, moguls, titans,
movers and shakers, Monty Meigs arranged for a panel of U.S.
Army battalion commanders from Iraq and Afghanistan to
present their view of what is happening in their sectors.
It was a dazzling performance by these best and brightest
lieutenant colonels. They were energetic, they were
articulate, funny, and fully at ease in a roomful of folks
who represented a slightly higher pay grade than they did.
They complained, mildly, that their good works and
accomplishments had not received enough press attention, and
then they engaged in a friendly but pointed exchange with
three of us who represented the media at that conference.
Their performance and their bearing represented what I have
been encountering for some time in my dealings with the
American military in distant battlefields and military bases
in this country, away from the constraints of the Pentagon.
The other guests, who represented enormous financial,
industrial, social and political strength and power in
America, were bedazzled to the point of full immersion
infatuation. They rushed to the stage to express their
enthusiasm for what they had just heard. They turned to me,
and to Tom Friedman of The New York Times and Donald Graham,
the publisher of The Washington Post, demanding to know why
they had not heard these stories before, why they had not
read of the brilliance and the character of line officers in
the field.
That night at dinner these four lieutenant colonels were
rock stars among groupies, as everyone from Bill Gates at
Microsoft and Warren Buffet and Phil Knight of Nike gathered
around to continue their adulation, to suggest lecture tours
across America, to participate in corporate motivation
sessions and to commiserate with them as well about the
absence of press coverage.
I was at once amused and determined to use this as an
opening to address what I believe is a growing problem in
American life. The next day it turns out that I was the
guest, the sole interview before the same collection of
powerful elites. And I took that opportunity to remind the
audience that what they heard the day before, had been, in
fact, widely reported, often at great risk--day in and day
out--for three years on all the print and electronic news
outlets. Perhaps not exactly as the young officers would have
liked, but reported nonetheless. And even the officers gave
me a sly smile and said you're right on that.
Moreover, for those in the audience who believed that these
young battalion commanders were some kind of an elite all-
star team handpicked by the Pentagon, I was happy to correct
that impression. I told that gathering of moguls and titans,
I've met hundreds more like them. They are exceptional
officers, but they're not the exception.
Furthermore what they're doing in their commands in Iraq
and Afghanistan may be news to you, but it's not news to
communities and neighbors of mine in Big Timber, Montana, or
in hamlets in South Carolina, or barrios in East Los Angeles
or the working class neighborhoods of Detroit, or the small
towns of the Great Plains. In those communities, they pay
attention, because it is their sons and daughters, and
fathers and mothers, who are in harm's way in those distant
places.
General Meigs performed an important public service that
week in Sun Valley by reminding that audience of the place of
the military, not just in our national security
considerations, but also in our social and political
construct as a nation. Indisputably, this country has the
finest military in the history of mankind.
It is a superior force at every measurable level, made up
entirely by volunteers, fully integrated ethnically and in
terms of gender.
Unfortunately, it's also a military that in too many
families, in too many communities and especially in too many
corporate suites and boardrooms, country clubs and other
gathering places for the elite, it is a military that is out
of sight and out of mind. It is separate and distinct from
the day-to-day concerns of too many Americans, especially to
the elites with their hands on the power. That's not just
inappropriate; it is unacceptable and even dangerous to a
democratic society.
One of the enduring lessons I have learned from my interest
in and association with what I call the greatest generation,
is the long-term beneficial effect of an organic relationship
between a civilian society and its military.
World War II was obviously a unique undertaking, requiring
millions of people in uniform, a re-ordering its civilian
priorities and common sacrifices for a common commitment.
I have come to believe that one of the unheralded dividends
at the end of the war for America was the maturation, the
discipline, the ethos of teamwork young men and women in
their 20s brought back to their civilian lives.
Now young Americans who are not in uniform like to say,
they're ``finding themselves'' in their 20s, or they're
``exploring other options'' in life. The greatest generation
found themselves in distant battlefields or in great sea
battles, or in dogfights in the air--they found themselves on
factory floors or in shipyards, in the daily rationing of
meat and gasoline and luxury items.
What they learned in those life-altering experiences, they
applied to the building of this country, to the expansion of
freedom, and most of all, to the ordering of priority for the
common good. And because their experience had been so shared
at every level, there was a common appreciation of the place
of the military. Now we ask too few sacrifices at the
civilian level.
There are the yellow ribbons and the welcome home signs,
but for too many Americans those are more ornamental than
organic to their own daily lives.
A distinguished American historian wrote recently of our
mercenary military conjuring up images of young warriors who
are motivated only by paychecks, in effect, contract killers.
That's a profoundly erroneous conclusion. It is more
widely shared, however, than we may care to acknowledge.
So who's to blame for this schism in our national
definition? Ladies and gentlemen I would suggest that we all
are.
Our political leaders in both parties are not sufficiently
addressing the gap with their constituents. They're not
asking their constituents to make even token sacrifices, as a
reminder that there is a war underway. They're not
encouraging their financial patrons--the special interests
that help elect them to office--to take a more active role in
implementing a better understanding of the place of the
military in our lives and in the world.
Now it's just as well that our military establishment needs
to no longer confine itself, by-and-large, to its own
culture. It no longer should be as defensive as it can be,
when it finds itself under fire.
The media have been too focused on the triumphs and
shortcomings on the battlefield, too unimaginative in dealing
with the complexities of the military/political structure, as
well as the manpower, the financial and the policy issues.
No institution in America is as representative of this
great immigrant nation with all our varied parts as the
military, and we need to be reminded of that on a daily
basis.
Too many citizens are willing to assume that defending the
country is an assignment best left to someone else, that it's
not a personal or family obligation or calling. In the modern
culture there are too few people around to challenge that.
No one wants to return to a World War to reclaim a
continuing relationship between the civilian population and
the military. But neither is it in our national interest to
have two populations--one in uniform and one not--with little
or no connectivity.
The greatest accomplishment of the greatest generation was
not just on the battlefield. It was in the post-war
continuation of a commitment to a whole nation, civilian and
military, each respectful and mindful of their relationship
and role assigned them in advancing the national interests.
It is time for a new generation to re-activate that
greatness--in uniform and out.
Then perhaps, when my great, great granddaughter is ready
to write her book about our generation, she will be able to
say, ``They, too, met the test.''