The Soldier Who Wrote His Own Obituary

I appreciate someone who says, "Thank you for your service." In so far as they understand what it is they thank me for they are undoubtedly sincere. However, there is in that phrase an implication of altruism that doesn't very well fit me or, as near as I could tell, anyone with whom I shared the brotherhood of combat. 

None of the words that follow are mine. Certainly, they describe a very special, even privileged, life. But they also, quite uniquely, express something I deeply believe: that one doesn't die for something, one lives for it. This sentence, even removed from the context below, immediately rang true: "I deny that I died FOR anything - not my country, not my Army, not my fellow man, 

none of these things. I LIVED for these things..."

Major John Alexander Hottell III graduated from West Point in 1964, tenth in a class of 564. He was a Rhodes scholar. In Vietnam he was twice awarded the Silver Star, the nation's third highest award for valor. He commanded Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. He later became an aide to Major General George W. Casey, the division's commanding general. Both were killed in a helicopter crash near the Cambodian border on July 7, 1970.

A year prior to his death, at a time when his unit was in heavy combat, then Captain Hottell suggested that each soldier in his 8th Cavalry company write a letter telling his loved ones what they meant to him and that there was a real possibility he may not return. Whether all - or any - did we do not know. We do know, however, that Hottell wrote to his wife Linda, and in so doing he became The Soldier Who Wrote His Own Obituary:

I am writing my own obituary for several reasons, and I hope none of them are too trite. First, I would like to spare my friends, who may happen to read this, the usual clichés about being a good soldier. They were all kind enough to me, and I not enough to them. Second, I would not want to be a party to perpetuation of an image that is harmful and inaccurate: "glory" is the most meaningless of concerpts, and I feel that in some cases it is doubly damaging. And third, I am quite simply the last authority on my own death.

I loved the Army: it reared me, it nurtured me, and it gave me the most satisfying years of my life. Thanks to it I have lived an entire lifetime in 26 years. It is only fitting that I should die in its service. We all have but one death to spend, and insofar as it can have any meaning, it finds it in the service of comrades in arms.

And yet, I deny that I died FOR anything - not my country, not my Army, not my fellow man, none of these things. I LIVED for these things, and the manner in which I chose to do it involved the very real chance that I would die in the execution of my duties. I knew this, and accepted it, but my love for West Point and the Army was great enough -- and the promise that I would some day be able to serve all the ideals that meant anything to me through it was great enough - for me to accept this possibility as a part of a price which must be paid for all things of great value. If there is nothing worth dying for - in this sense - there is nothing worth living for.

The Army let me live in Japan, Germany and England with experiences in all of these places that others only dream about. I have skied the Alps, killed a scorpion in my tent [while] camping in Turkey, climbed Mount Fuji, visited the ruins of Athens, Ephesus and Rome, seen the town of Gordium where another Alexander challenged his destiny, gone to the opera in Munich, plays in the West End of London, seen the Oxford-Cambridge rugby match, gone for pub crawls through the Cotswolds, seen the night-life in Hamburg, danced to the Rolling Stones and earned a master's degree in a foreign university.

I have known what it is like to be married to a fine and wonderful woman and to love her beyond bearing with the sure knowledge that she loves me; I have commanded a company and been a father priest, income-tax adviser, confessor, and judge for 200 men at one time; I have played college football and rugby, won the British national diving championship two years in a row, boxed for Oxford against Cambridge only to be knocked out in the first round, and played handball to distraction - and all of these sports I loved, I learned at West Point. They gave me hours of intense happiness.

I have been an exchange student at the German Military Academy, and gone to the German Jumpmaster school. I have made thirty parachute jumps from everything from a balloon in England to a jet at Fort Bragg. I have written an article that was published in Army magazine, and I have studied philosophy.

I have experienced all these things because I was in the Army and because I was an Army brat. The Army is my life, it is such a part of what I was that what happened is the logical outcome of the life I loved. I never knew what it is to fail, I never knew what it is to be too old or too tired to do anything. I lived a full life in the Army, and it has exacted the price. It is only just."