The War hero I Never KNeW

BY JAMES LONG

P-47 lost speed, stalled and crashed. Captain Robert H. Fautt, Jr., 29, was killed instantly. Museums are places we visit to connect—with history, with art and culture, with the stories and shared experiences of humankind. The West Point Museum—and its compelling adjacent Visitors Center—are exemplary in that regard with fascinating artifacts. I’d highly recommend a visit. Museums are also a repository for memories, a place for reflection, a break from a breakneck world, allowing us to explore deeper questions and more soulful meanings.

As I left the West Point Museum, while walking along the campus edge and its spectacular views overlooking the Hudson River, I thought of the uncle I never knew— how handsome Bobby must have looked in his cadet uniform, picked on as a “plebe,” returning the favor as a “firstie.” I pictured him with his best buddies, secreting away for a night in wartime Manhattan, with other uniformed men and women in the streets, the same streets where I witness US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard service members during NYC’s legendary “Fleet Week.”

I couldn’t help negotiating in my mind, however, what it was all for. From all the early and modern weapons of war I’d just seen, it’s impossible to shy away from the complexities a war museum brings to bear. Indeed, I’ve visited the Vietnam Military History Museum, in Hanoi, and more than a few captured American artifacts on display present quite a dispiriting perspective.

“We learn that the soul of fate is the soul of us,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. “All the toys that infatuate men and which they play for…All the drums and rattles by which men are made willing to have their heads broke… are led out solemnly every morning to parade.”

As I resumed my journey on the train to see friends, looking again at West Point from across the Hudson, I saw another parade, those of its current class of cadets drilling in formation on its grounds. And I felt grateful.