*Author's Note: The credit for the plot goes to a reader named Steven who emailed it to me and asked if it was something I could use. It is so I am, and my thanks to him for the idea. The details of the story are, for better or for worse, mine alone.
*****
"Just moments from now, each of you will become commissioned officers in the U.S. military. Virtually all of you will become Army officers and I, your families, and your nation could not be more proud of you.
Before you begin the greatest adventure of your lives, I am wont to remind you of the words of perhaps the most well-known of our predecessors, General Douglas MacArthur. All of you are very familiar with the words of his farewell speech to the corps of cadets, but there is no better time to refresh our minds with them than right here, right now.
On that day, General MacArthur famously uttered these three words: 'Duty. Honor. Country.'
He went on to say, 'Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.'
Skipping slightly ahead, he told us, 'They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.'
I would now add 'gentlewomen' or some correspondingly meaningful word."
There was a mild chuckle before the Superintendent of Cadets, Army Major General Richard R. Callaghan, continued speaking.
"Today, a portion of the mantle of this nation's leadership is passed on to you. Put your soldiers ahead of you at all times, and always put your nation ahead of them. Your duty is not to me or to any commander or even to any Commander in Chief. The oath to which you will soon swear is to The Constitution of the United Sates and it your solemn duty to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
I wish each of you luck and most of all success as your nation is depending on you to provide it with the safety and security it needs to allow its people to quietly go about their lives never having to worry about such things. You will encounter many challenges throughout your time on active duty, and you will rise to meet each and every one of them. Not to do so is unconscionable. To fail is unforgivable. Always, always remember these three words. Duty, honor, country."
General Callaghan paused then said, "I would be remiss not to take a brief moment and break with tradition. As you know, my own son, Richard, Jr., sits here today among you. His mother and I are very proud of him. It's not easy to succeed here and when your old man is the boss, it's ever more difficult. Son? We wish you all the best. Oh, and Rick? Don't screw it up."
There was raucous laughter as the West Point class of 2017 prepared to stand and take the oath of office making them second lieutenants in the United States Army along with two others who had chosen to become Air Force officers. That was very unusual but not unheard of by any means.
"Congratulations, Lieutenant," his father said as the new officer saluted him for the first time.
"Congratulations, honey!" his mother, Marie Callaghan said. "So what's next?"
"I think I'm gonna spend the day with Sarah if that's okay," Rick told them knowing the reaction he would get from his mother.
"Oh, okay," she said in 'that' tone of voice.
He knew she'd never approved of their relationship for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that Sarah Carpenter was six years older than him. She also hadn't have what anyone would call a stable childhood. So no matter how many times Rick had tried to assure his mother she was an intelligent, mature, thoughtful girl, she refused to even try and warm up to her.
Making matters worse, his father thought the world of her, and now that his parents were going through a bitter divorce, the possibility of reconciling all this seemed slim to none.
"I wish you'd reconsider, Richard," his mom said using his full name the way she did whenever she was disappointed in or angry with her son.
"Mom, I really like Sarah. A lot."
"No. Go on. Have a good time. Lord knows you've earned it, son," his father said without looking at his estranged wife, drawing an icy stare from the woman who'd recently moved out after 26 years of marriage.
She never did give her husband a valid reason for leaving unless 'needing her space' constituted being valid. She'd simply announced how she'd 'grown tired' of being his wife and wanted to try something new. Now that their only child was out of college, she saw no reason to carry on the facade of being happy any longer, so she'd left him around two weeks ago, once Rick's final exams were over so the divorce wouldn't be a distraction to their very handsome and very intelligent only son.
Unlike her husband who was still what the Army called a 'PT animal' with PT standing for physical training, Marie had gained a lot of weight and had been drinking a lot for the last two or three years. She blamed that on her husband whom she blamed for her not having an identity she could call her own.
She'd enjoyed being an Army wife up until around the time Richard had made colonel and taken command of an Army brigade. He'd always been gone a lot, and that wasn't the problem. What she grew to resent was feeling like she had to be available around the clock for every one of the several hundred wives in the brigade. Her life was essentially his life, and it chaffed at her to no end and continued doing so until she'd finally had enough.
She'd not only held off until her son's graduation was all but assured, but her husband's career was also coming to an end the following month. West Point had been his last assignment over a 30-year career in which he'd been promoted ahead of his peers three different times.
Richard Callaghan, Sr., was a soldier's soldier. He was 6'2" and weighed a muscular 200 pounds with virtually no fat on his still-hard body. At 52, he had a touch of gray around his temples which made the closely-cropped, very dark hair on the rest of his head give him that distinguished look men his age coveted. He had deep-blue, piercing eyes and a smile that was immediately disarming. Around his soldiers, he was 'hard as woodpecker lips' in both peace and war, but was also a gentleman in the truest sense of the word.
All officers received a certain amount of respect by virtue of their rank, but anything beyond that had to be earned. In General Callaghan's case, it had been earned at every level from the platoon to an armored division. Men from his long and illustrious career would have willingly followed him into hell with a squirt gun, and he would have willingly laid down his own life for any one of them.
The purple heart he wore next to the Army Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second highest medal, was evidence of that. The medal, along with the purple heart, had been awarded as he'd been seriously wounded while personally covering the movement of his men with a vehicle-mounted machine gun during a vicious ambush in Iraq when he was a battalion commander. As the senior officer, he had no place doing that, but fate made him the man closest to the weapon, and were he to have waited even several seconds to order someone else up there, many of his men may have been killed. So he did what any good soldier would do and humbly accepted the recognition that came with it giving all of the credit to his men.
