“As a small boy I had known a number of these men who had fought in the Army of the Potomac; they were grave, dignified, and thoughtful, with long white beards and a general air of being pillars of the community . . . yet once, ages ago, they had been everywhere and had seen everything, and nothing that happened to them thereafter meant anything much.
. . . these old gentlemen, drowsing out the greater part of their lives in the backwoods, had once been lifted beyond themselves by an experience which perhaps was all the more significant because it was imperfectly understood. They gave a tone and a color to the lives of the people who knew them, and they put a special meaning on such a word as “patriotism”; it was not something you talked about very much, just a living force that you instinctively responded to.
Bruce Catton
“The Army of the Potomac”
1951
“They will live a long time these men of the South Pacific. They had an American quality. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until their Guadalcanel sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge.”
James Michener
“Tales of the South Pacific”
1946
"Respect . . ."
STORMBRINGER SENDS
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