Olmsted Scholar Admiral James Foggo III (OSC 87, Strasbourg) spoke at the Flanders Field American Cemetery in Belgium to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of Armistice Day. The transcript of ADM Foggo’s speech follows:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Scouts, Friends, thank you for your presence today.
Flanders Field American Cemetery Superintendent Richard Arseneault, Scouts Master Jerry Beck, thank you for organizing this important ceremony of remembrance with the U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa Band.
Together we are marking a century since the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
One hundred years ago today, Allied Supreme Commander Marshall Ferdinand Foch delivered the general order: “Hostilities will cease on the whole front as from November 11 at 11 o’clock.” There was silence after 52 months of war. There was silence after millions of deaths. There was the silence of peace.
This is not my first time in Flanders Fields. Thirty years ago in 1988, I visited when I was an Olmsted Scholar at the University of Strasbourg. In 2007, I returned with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, prior to attending his first NATO Military Committee Meeting as Chairman. He wanted to show his solidarity with those who had gone before us.
I often reflect on this war in particular due to my family connection to the continent. Although I stand before you today as a United States Navy Admiral, my roots are firmly entrenched in Europe as my Grandfathers were entrenched here, on the Western Front, during the Great War as members of Canadian Expeditionary Force.
My grandfathers fought in the trenches between 1914 until the war’s conclusion in 1918. Harold won the Croix de Guerre avec Palme for action at Courcelette and James was awarded the King George Military Cross at Buckingham Palace. James was battlefield promoted from Private to Captain due to the death of nearly every senior person in his battalion.
Harold’s diary from World War I is in my office in Naples, prominently displayed alongside James’s diaries from World War I and World War II. If you would indulge me, I’d like to provide you with just a short excerpt from Harold’s view of life on the Western Front:
– The first entry, 1 January ’18: [Pause] “After three years of war, I finally decided to write a journal”
– January 25, ’18: “A gas shell fell near us and filled our area-we were wearing our respirators for a long time…”
– March 4, ’18: “Today a big raid… We were all in our positions…one hundred in the line…Germans came through, almost all were killed…”
As you can see, Harold fought with his comrades through harrowing experience after harrowing experience, all the while devoted to those in the line next to him.
We struggle to reconcile the brutality and scale of World War One. Events like today help me, and hopefully help you, place this global atrocity into context.
We find ourselves today on a hallowed battlefield of the Ypres-Lys offensive. The majority of the 368 headstones are for men who died during the last days of the war. The secluded recesses of the Cemetery represent the four American Divisions who fought in Belgium. More than 81,000 U.S. Servicemen died in Europe, including 1,043 on Belgian Soil.
American Expeditionary Forces led by General “Black Jack” Pershing crossed the Atlantic, landed in France, and joined Allied armies…sometimes under command of foreign commanders. The 37th and 91st Divisions fought under the command of King Albert I of Belgium…on this very ground. They fought with spirit.
Major General De Goutte, Commander of the French Sixth Army, shared the following praise:
“I have found the same spirit of duty and discipline freely given in the 37th and 91st Divisions, United States Army, which brings about valiant soldiers and victorious armies. Glory to such troops and to such commanders. They have bravely contributed to the liberation of a part of Belgian territory and to final victory. The great nation to which they belong can be proud of them.”
We join the silent heroes who’s headstones are standing proud. One of these headstones is of a U.S. Navy Sailor. I want to tell his story this morning.
Kenneth MacLeish, son of a Scottish Immigrant, left Yale University to serve in the war. He enlisted as a navy electrician, 2nd class on 26 March 1917, then subsequently received a commission in the Naval Reserve Flying Corps.
In France he participated in many raids over enemy lines. On 14 October, his plane, a Sopwith Camel, was shot down and Lieutenant MacLeish was forced to crash land. It was not until the day after Christmas that the body was found … lying just as it had fallen, with every evidence that death had been instantaneous.
His brother Archibald MacLeish, “Archie”, who also interrupted his studies to fight in the war, wrote this poem, and later won three Pulitzer prizes for his works:
FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES
This other’s afterward –
after the Armistice, I mean, the floods,
the weeks without a word. That foundered
farmyard is in Belgium somewhere.
The faceless figure on its back, the helmet buckled, wears what looks like Navy wings. A lengthed shadow falls across the muck about its feet…
Kenneth was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for “distinguished service and extraordinary heroism”. In 1919, the destroyer USS MacLeish (DD-220) was named in his honor. As a vanguard U.S. Naval Aviator, his courage and dedication live on in his prolific writings, as well as his brother’s poetry.
We trust these heroes find solace in knowing that the world they bequeathed to us was worth their sacrifice. Now it is up to all of us…
Those who forged victory in World War I reach out in spirit to today’s young patriots who are still fighting for freedom in distant lands; giving of themselves so that others may have a brighter future.
We are honored to call such men and women – past and present – Americans. Americans who joined their Allied brothers and sisters to demonstrate unequaled resolve to combat tyranny, and in so doing, inspired the formidable NATO Alliance we maintain today. We are inspired by their service and humbled by their sacrifice.
In the memorial building behind me, doves of peace fly toward a lighted lamp on the ceiling mosaic. As we pause one morning each November to give thanks for those who left us too soon, we have the peace of mind to remember: the ground under our feet is the very ground these heroes fought to free. The same earth they died to free.
As the brother of Kenneth, Archie MacLeish, wrote:
“A poem should not mean / But be.”
We will soon hear the poignant poem written by Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae that captures this existential essence. A part of the same Canadian Expeditionary Force as my grandfathers Harold and James, John McCrae was a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade. At the Ypres Salient in 1915, one death particularly affected McCrae: Lieutenant Alexis Helmer of Ottawa. He was a friend and former student who was killed by a shell burst. In the absence of a Chaplain, McCrae performed the funeral ceremony. The next day, on May 3rd, McCrae sat at the back of an ambulance parked near his dressing station a few hundred yards north of Ypres. It was there that he composed fifteen lines of poetry.
Together, in this cemetery, at this centenary, we bring John McCrae’s poem to life.
In Flanders Fields by LTC John McCrae:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.