Remember.

[Extraordinarius]

"...Memorial Day came. I drove to Anzio to hear a speech by General Lucian Truscott, who still commanded the Fifth Army. Normally, I am allergic to Veterans Days and Armistice Days and the like, but Truscott was somebody special. Besides, I was curious to hear that gravelly voice over a PA system. The Anzio-Nettuno cemetery was a collecting point and there were about twenty thousand American graves. Families hadn't started digging up the bodies and bringing them home. The speakers' platform, covered with bunting, was arranged with its back to the endless rows of white-painted temporary wooden markers. Before the stand were spectator benches, with a number of camp chairs down front for VIPs, including several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"When Truscott spoke, he turned away form the visitors and addressed himself to the corpses he had commanded here. It was the most moving gesture I ever saw. It came from a hard-boiled old man who was incapable of planned dramatics. The general's remarks were brief and extemporaneous. He apologized to the deand men for their presence here. He said everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but that every leader knows in his heart that this is not altogether true. He said he hoped anybody here through any mistake of his would forgive him, but he realized he was asking a hell of a lot under the circumstances. One of the Senators' cigars went out; he bent over to relight it, then thought better of it. Truscott said he would not speak about the glorious dead because he didn't see much glory in getting killed in your late teens or early twenties. He promised that if in the future he ran into anybody, especially old men, who thought death in battle was glorious, he would straighten them out. He said he thought it was the least he could do.

"Back in Rome I finished the Time cover, aware of the fact that the real Willie was in one of those Anzio graves or not far north or south of it."

-Bill Mauldin