Men pass away, but institutions survive. In time we shall all go to join our comrades who gave up their lives in France. But in our own generation, when the call came, we accepted the flag of our fathers; we have added to it new glory and renown—and we pass it on.
HISTORICAL APPENDIX BY JOYCE KILMER
I
Fifth Avenue held a memorable crowd on the afternoon of the ninth of March, 1917. There were old women there in whose eyes was the eager light that only the thought of a son can cause to glow; there were proud old men—some of them with battered blue garrison-caps, and badges that told of service in the War between the States—there were wives, mothers, children—all waiting, in jubilant and affectionate expectation, the sound of a band playing “Garryowen” and the sight of a flag fluttering from a pole so covered with battle-furls as to glisten in the sunlight like a bar of silver.
The Sixty-ninth Regiment was back from the border. Escorted by its old friend, the Seventh New York, the Regiment marched nearly eight hundred strong, down the Avenue and east to the Armory. The crowd—or a large part of it—followed, and soon families separated for months were reunited. When the Sixty-ninth was mustered out of service that March day, after months of arduous service on the Mexican Border, it numbered 783 men. Almost immediately it lost some three hundred officers and men. This was in accordance with War Department orders and the National Defense Act of June 3rd, 1916, which provided that men with dependant relatives should be discharged from the service. Men were lost also because of the system, now discontinued, by which a soldier in the National Guard was furloughed to the reserve after three years of active service.
So in the early Spring of 1917, with participation in the European War a certainty, the Sixty-ninth Regiment found itself far below war strength, having lost a great number of men whom experience and training had made ideal soldiers. At once a recruiting campaign was instituted, but a recruiting campaign of a special kind. The Sixty-ninth has never found it at all difficult to fill its ranks—when it was under Southern fire in the Sixties it was brought up to war strength nine times. But the purpose in view now was to bring into the regiment men who would, in every purpose and way—physically, mentally and morally—keep up its ancient and honorable standards. It was easy enough to enlist hundreds of strong men who could be developed into good soldiers. But this was not the object of the recruiting of the Spring of 1917. It was desired to enlist strong, intelligent, decent-living men, men whose sturdy Americanism was strengthened and vivified by their Celtic blood, men who would be worthy successors of those unforgotten patriots who at Bloody Ford and on Marye’s Heights earned the title of “The Fighting Irish.”
The Regiment set its own standards in selecting recruits. In weight, for example, one hundred and twenty-eight pounds was established as the minimum. And if some honest man with broad shoulders and a knockout in each fist was unable to read ACXUROKY on a card hung thirty feet away—why, the examining physicians were instructed not to be overly meticulous in their work. But if the candidate, having every physical perfection, seemed to be the kind of man who would be out of harmony with the things for which the Sixty-ninth stands and has always stood, then the rigorous application of some of the qualifying tests invariably resulted in his rejection.
When, on April 6th, 1917, President Wilson declared that a state of war existed between the United States and Germany, his words found the Sixty-ninth Regiment ready, its ranks filled to war strength with soldiers of whom the men who fought at Gettysburg and Chancellorsville would not be ashamed. There was new intensity in the nightly drills; there was new fervor in the resolve of every man, veteran of the Border and recruit alike, to make the Regiment as nearly perfect a fighting unit as possible.
The 6th of April is a date which no American soldier will forget. And almost equally memorable is the 15th day of July of the same year—the day on which the National Guard was called into Federal Service. The Sixty-ninth regiment, 2002 strong, scarcely felt the heat of that torrid midsummer, so intent were all the men on preparing themselves for the great adventure, and so passionately eager were they for the call to service over-seas.
On the 5th of August the Regiment, still retaining the numerical designation which is permanently engraved upon the tablets of our nation’s history, was drafted into the Regular Army of the United States. This was a step nearer to the firing line—made, accordingly, with enthusiasm. And on the 25th day of August came the electrifying news that the Sixty-ninth Regiment had been selected as the first New York National Guard organization to be sent to the war in vanguard of the American Expeditionary Force.