The Big Parade

Did you hear? A Big Parade is coming! It is the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, and coincidentally, a certain someone’s birthday. Let’s celebrate! Ever since Trump saw a military parade in France in 2017, he has wanted one and he is finally getting it. 

The Donald obsessed about a parade during his first term. Fortunately, his advisors were not all yes men and they talked him out of it. In 2025, it is a different story. The man who in the ‘60s had four service deferments and a medical exemption from Vietnam due to a diagnosis of “bone spurs” in his heels, is having his long-awaited parade.

Until recently, the Army’s birthday festival plans did not include a massive parade. What caused the change? We all know the answer. The President wanted a “big, beautiful” military parade. The parade on the 14th of June will feature nearly 7,000 soldiers, 150 vehicles including 28 Abrams tanks, 28 Bradley fighting vehicles, and 28 Stryker armored vehicles, along with over 45 aircraft. At a cost of $45 million dollars, not counting clean up, repairs, and maintenance, the parade is not cheap. How are we keeping DOGE from finding out about this big, beautiful expense? 

The good news is we have found a way to cut costs in one area.  While our troops are here in the nation’s capitol for the parade, they will not stay in hotels. Instead, we will house them in empty government buildings and warehouses, where they will use sleeping bags and cots.

The President is much like “Professor” Harold Hill, the ultimate conman, in the movie, “The Music Man”. With apologies to  Robert Preston and his 76 Trombones, 

Forty five aircraft led the big parade,

With twenty eight tanks close at hand.

To the rhythm of Harch! Harch! Harch!

7,000 troops began to march

Just to meet the President’s demand…

I have nothing against parades in general. A 4th of July Parade. The Fireman’s Parade. A Christmas/Holiday Parade. Hell, growing up, my home town of Ottawa, Illinois held a Friendship Day Parade every summer.

There may be value in holding a military parade, but it has nothing to do with honoring our troops. Soldiers generally dislike parades. If a veteran tells you he or she enjoyed marching in parades, they are looking at the past through rose colored glasses. I hated them when I was at West Point, and when I was in the Army. My Dad took part in a  parade review for FDR during the Casablanca Conference in 1943. He, and his fellow GIs disliked it and made fun of Roosevelt throughout the event*. 

 My friend, Dave Job, both a Marine and Air Force Veteran, said this about parades: 

“Nothing illustrates the concept of “hurry up and wait” better than being in a parade. Hours of preparation, inspections, the waiting around and standing there in dress uniform, while sweating like a pig. There is always someone passing out, and then you finally have the few minutes you pass in review in front of a bunch of grinning apes. Sorry for the rant.”

I believe the United States Army understands this, which is one of the reasons there was originally no parade scheduled as a part of the 250th anniversary. They also know we aren’t Russia, or China, or North Korea, or even France. We don’t need our troops marching down the street to show how tough our Army is. Leave that to the tinpot dictators and wannabes.

If you really want to thank the Army for their 250 years of service to this country, give our soldiers the day off. Our GIs deserve it and would enjoy that more than marching in a parade. You may think we are honoring the troops by having them march in the parade, but you would be wrong. What we are really doing is wasting their time.

Since this travesty started with France, perhaps it is worth a brief return there. In 1960, Jean Lartéguy authored a novel called “The Centurions“**  about the French Army in Indochina and Algeria. If you have the chance to read it, please do. It is excellent and still used by the United States Army to discuss and analyze counter-insurgency techniques. Here is a quote from the book:

“I’d like France to have two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general’s bowel movements or their colonel’s piles: an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.

The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not be put on display but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.”

 

We should not misuse our fighting men and women by turning them into toy soldiers and requiring them to put on a display in our nation’s Capitol for the immodest fee of $45 million dollars. Unfortunately, it’s a done deal, troops be d@mned. It’s one more affront to the military and our veterans by the current administration. 

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Addendum:

• Thanks to my friend Dave Job, my fellow Army Vet, Andrew Herstek, my West Point Classmate Ken Bresnahan, and my wife Cathy for their adds and edits to this blog. They all contributed to the final product. Dave had this additional thought on a reward for the troops: “I agree that a much more fitting tribute to the soldiers would be a day off, and even treat the enlisted men to a free beer at the e-club.  My CO (Commanding Officer) did that one year on the Marine Corps birthday and I’ve never forgotten it.”
• The photos in this blog are of parts of an antique toy I inherited from mom. The Toy Soldiers marching in an endless loop seemed appropriate.
• * If you want to read about dad and the parade for Roosevelt at Casablanca in ‘43, you can do so here: Jan 1943 – Dad, Roosevelt, and a Brush with History. https://mnhallblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/247/
• ** From Wikipedia: ““The Centurions”, published in 1960, is a novel written by French journalist and former soldier Jean Lartéguy following a French Airborne Battalion through the First Indochina War, Algerian War, and the Suez Crisis. In the United States, as American involvement in the Vietnam War increased, the book was studied by American officers and Special Forces soldiers. More recently, the book regained currency with the onset of the Global War on Terrorism and the insurgency phase of the Iraq War. Since then, it has often been quoted or analyzed in works on counter-insurgency.”