>>>Words can’t express his class.<<<
His own words should have been headlines.
I cannot find a transcript of his speech, but CNN actually did a segment which uses the words that I remember General Pace saying at his farewell ceremony.
HOLMES: I’m T.J. Holmes. So glad you could be with us this morning. Up first this half hour, a final tribute by General Peter Pace, who used his own farewell to remember some of his men. We get this story from CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (on camera): On the day his 40-year military career ended, in part because of the war in Iraq, General Peter Pace remembered the first men he lost in combat in another unpopular war long ago.
CNN has obtained photos from a private moment the day General Pace retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1st.
(voice over): After this farewell ceremony with the president, the secretary of Defense, and the new chairman, Pace went to the Vietnam wall and left some notes. Each was addressed to one of the men who died during his command in Vietnam in 1968. Look closely. Each note has a set of his four stars pinned to the card.
This note, to 19-year-old Lance Corporal Guido Farinaro reads, “These are yours, not mine. With love and respect, your platoon leader, Pete Pace.”
He remembered those same men and others when he closed his farewell speech just an hour earlier.
GENERAL PETER PACE, (RET.) U.S. MARINE CORPS.: I made a promise about 38 years ago to Guido Farinaro, Chubby Hale, Whitey Traverse, Mike Witt, Little Joe Arnold, Freddy Williams, Jon Miller that I would serve this country in whatever capacity I could, for as long as I could, and try to do it in a way that would pay respect to the sacrifice that they made following Second Lieutenant Peter Pace in combat.
STARR: Pace, of course, did not get a second term as chairman because of the Iraq war. But we now know he left office that day making one last private stop to say good-bye one more time to the men of his platoon in Vietnam.
Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.