On March 7, Superintendent Steve Gilland announced a planned change to the official mission of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: eliminating the words “Duty,” “Honor,” and “Country.”
It is impossible to overstate the reverence with which those three words have been held at West Point, in the entire Army, and throughout the U.S. military. In his 1962 farewell address to the West Point Corps of Cadets, Gen. Douglas MacArthur encapsulated their meaning for American soldiers:
Duty, Honor, Country — those three hallowed words, reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point 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.
MacArthur graduated from West Point in 1903. By that time, “Duty, Honor, Country” was already recognized as the official West Point motto. Among many other locations, it is on the West Point crest that is on every graduate’s class ring. It remains the standard for military professionalism.
This is the presentation LTG Gilland gave to the Board of Visitors on March 7, about the change:
Everything — planning, training, execution — is compelled by a military unit’s defined mission. The more simply it can be stated, the better. My favorite example is the mission the Combined Chiefs of Staff gave to Gen. Eisenhower in 1944: “Enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other
