INTRUDING:

Late one afternoon I got a call from a higher-up in the White House (I had lots of higher-ups).

"What do you know about the battle of Guadalcanal?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"I figured," he said. He told me a gathering of Marines who fought at Guadalcanal was to be held the next morning at the Iwo Jima memorial, across the river in Arlington, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the battle. Campaign strategists had appropriated the ceremony as a fitting occasion to reacquaint Americans with the fact that their president was a war hero. And I was to write his remarks.

One of the White House's tireless, endlessly resourceful researchers came to my rescue and deep into the night we learned everything we could about the battle of Guadalcanal. The first thing we learned was that it wasn't a battle--more like a campaign, six months long, to dislodge an entrenched army from an island the Japanese saw, correctly, as the key to their defense of the Pacific. No sooner had the Marines landed than the American fleet was hammered by the Japanese from the sea and air, forcing a hasty retreat and leaving the Marines with only sporadic resupply as they engaged the enemy. Our attacks involved not only air assaults but episodes of savage hand-to-hand combat in the steaming jungles and along the jagged hillsides. As the months wore on, as their fellow soldiers watched from around the world, the scope of the fighting grew to legendary proportions. The researcher unearthed a bit of doggerel that had circulated among troops in the Pacific and even Europe: "Say a prayer for your pal on Guadalcanal."

My higher-up had told me the speech had two requirements. The first was political. The campaign strategists insisted it contain a reference to the heroes of the Gulf War--the year before Bush had commanded the war with great subtlety and courage, but voters seemed to have forgotten it and they needed reminding. The second condition came from the president: no sentimental stuff. Not gonna make me cry! I didn't know whether "say a prayer" would make the cut.

The president arrived in Arlington the next morning. Under a brilliant sun hundreds of Marine veterans were spread across the hillside that slopes gently away from the statue of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. They gave Bush a splendid ovation. For forty years, much longer than my (then) lifetime, the president of the United States had been a veteran of World War 2. No matter what happened in November, Bush would be the last of them, and the thought lent a special poignancy to the event. [...]

Bush had revised the remarks that morning and worked on them some more on the drive from the White House. The aide who rode with him in the limousine told me the president liked the speech, including the old bit of doggerel. "It doesn't get too emotional," the aide said.

Bush delivered it with a few of his usual improvisations--shout outs to a clergy member, hat tips to other honored guests. He praised the courage of the men who hadn't made it off the island fifty years earlier and, by implication, the courage of the men who sat before him now, who had survived, only to continue the bloody hopscotch from island to island for three more years

"There was a rhyme passed around during those dark months that I'm sure many of the marines here remember . . . Every Marine who wasn't fighting on the island knew the lines. 'Say a prayer for your pal on Guadalcanal.'"

At the words many of the men roared approval; others rose and applauded, obviously pleased. I stood off to the side behind a rope line, feeling an intruder.

They are nearly all of them gone now, of course. And Bush joins them. No one could ask for a greater honor than serving such a man, and by extension serving them too.

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