New York National Guard
“The Fighting 69th”
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Statue of Father Duffy, Times Square, New York
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Irish Guards with Domhnall
To see the Guards with their mascot, visit here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4glC5X_VXQ0
Shamrocks on St. Paddy’s Day
Neither my wife nor I have any Irish “blood,” as far as we know ‒ although, in the past, I was known to have some Old Bushmills in my blood from time to time. Nevertheless, the strong contribution of the Irish to the United States, particularly to our military and to the settling of the West, leads us to feel a personal connection to St. Patrick’s Day and what it represents.
As an example of Irish Americans in our military, take Robert J. “Rob” O’Neill, Special Warfare Operator Senior Chief (Ret.). He was the man who killed Osama Bin Laden. Granted, all the members of the team were responsible for the successful outcome. But it was Rob O’Neill who actually brought justice to the terrorist-in-chief.
O’Neill made real the threat contained in the “Ballad of Mike Moran.” Mike Moran was a firefighter for the Fire Department of the City of New York. At the memorial service for the 343 department personnel killed on 9/11, Mike gave a rousing speech to the crowd at Madison Square Garden. In memory of his dead brother, Battalion Commander John Moran, he added a few personal words for Bin Laden. These words were picked up and woven into the ballad, each verse of which ends:
You’ll pay the price but first you’ll kiss my royal Irish ass.
Rob O’Neill, who put those words into action, was born in Butte, Montana. In the early 1900s, Butte had the largest percentage of Irish Americans of any city. That’s where my wife’s father grew up. His father was a cop in Butte. By chance I came across this image of a newspaper page from 1901. It shows the Butte Police Department at that time. My wife’s grandfather, Henry Auerbach, is number 27. Perhaps he knew Rob O’Neill’s great grandfather ‒ who knows?
The O’Neill family, like my wife’s family, my family, and so many others, came to America to become Americans. They saw America as a unique place, free of the religious persecution and class system that bedeviled their former homelands. At the same time, they wanted to preserve their religious and ethnic heritage. But their intention was to become Americans, not Irish or Austrians or whatever, merely living in America.
In contrast, many (by no means all) current immigrants want to live in America, but they have no intention of becoming Americans. They want to enjoy the benefits without shouldering the responsibilities. They want to enjoy the prosperity that the free-enterprise system creates, but they favor the socialism of their former homelands. They wave copies of the Constitution in front of TV cameras, but 51% of Muslims want to be governed by Sharia law. They want to turn their neighborhoods into smaller versions of Mexico, or Somalia, or wherever. That’s working out terribly in Europe ‒ why try it here?
I grew up in San Francisco. No, not today’s San Francisco, a city which:
(1) Declared itself a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants.
(2) Refused the free gift of the Battleship USS Iowa as a museum.
(3) Kicked ROTC out of public high schools.
(4) Refuses to cooperate with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The city where I grew up had strong Irish and Italian populations. I took ROTC in high school, and we marched in the annual Saint Patrick’s Day and Columbus Day parades, which were major events. I still recall slogging along, carrying my 9.5-pound Garand rifle as our band played “McNamara’s Band.” I liked the tune, but after the first mile or two, I confess that it got a bit tiresome.
Every time we prepared for a parade, we asked our master sergeant where the Sheriff’s Mounted Posse would be. He always assured us that it would be behind us in the parade. But it was very popular, so of course it was always near the head of the parade. Thus at an early age I learned a useful lesson:
Don’t always believe what authority figures tell you, and be careful to avoid the horse manure ‒ it can make a real mess.
We drilled with real Army M1 rifles with the firing pins removed, not with rubber toys that the ROTC drills with now ‒ assuming they are allowed on campus at all. And we practiced marksmanship with real .22 rifles at the rifle range in the basement of George Washington High School, not with air rifles.
Despite this ‒ or perhaps because of it ‒ there were no shootings at this multiethnic public high school. There were no stabbings either, though many boys carried knives ‒ Boy Scout knives. Guns don’t cause shootings, and knives don’t cause stabbings, any more than fists and shoes cause beatings. I know. I grew up in America. I was much luckier than today’s young people.
So those are my random thoughts on Saint Patrick’s Day ‒ or maybe not entirely random after all. Perhaps you can see the connection between the New York National Guard with their Irish wolfhounds; “The Ballad of Mike Moran;” Senior Chief Rob O’Neill; Butte, Montana; and me at age 16, slogging along with my rifle slung over my shoulder, to the tune of “McNamara’s Band.” It wasn’t just the Saint Patrick’s Day parade I was joining ‒ it was the American parade. Let’s keep the band playing, and let’s keep marching along together. The future of freedom depends on us.
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Contact: dstol@prodigy.net. You are welcome to publish or post these articles, provided that you cite the author and website.