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<em>John Alexander Hottell III </em>was born 24 December 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, and he died on 7 July 1970 in an aircraft accident in Vietnam. Between these events, there was little that was commonplace in his life, whether with his Army family in Germany and Japan, or at West Point, or as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, or in leading the First Cavalry Division soldiers that he loved. He shared this life with John and Helen, and with his cherished Linda Brown, and through a massive correspondence with devoted friends who grasped at understanding this seeming meteor, flashing into and beyond their lives. He probed this life in a ten-year journal of his thoughts and, finally, in a premonitory letter to his wife, written in event of his death in Vietnam. In this, he wrote: “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 cliches 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 concepts, and I feel that in some cases it is doubly damaging. And thirdly, I am quite simply the last authority on my own death.</p>
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“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.</p>
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"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 someday 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.</p>
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“The Army let me live in Japan, Germany, and England with experiences in all of these places that others only dream about. I have slaied in the Alps, killed a scorpion in my tent 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 nigby 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 advisor, 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 Jump-master 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 <em>Army </em>magazine, and I have studied philosophy.</p>
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"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 lived. 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.”</p>
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It is just, but only when tempered by the rich legacy which Alex left to those who adventured with him. Those who rode in the 1934 Rolls Royce with the silver lady afore, those who heard him play guitar with "The Pooh” in the London clubs, those who argued with his selection of surrealist paintings, those who feared for his safety in sports, those who fought with him when he won the Silver Stars. And those who read his letters and studied his journals, where he described with great compassion the men and women whose lives he touched. He wrote of Major General George Casey, with whom he died: “He is imaginative, aggressive, charming and has a more complete grasp of the complex missions that confront the American division commander than I would have thought possible. It will be almost a religious experience for me to serve with the Cav when this man commands it.” Of his soldiers in Vietnam: “They will do anything even though they feel that life and society have dumped all over them; they can still drive on and fight like demons, march like Jackson, and soldier like the very dickens when they have to it fills me with inspiration. They are truly the great people of this war the forgotten civilians who will probably never receive their due for their valor on the fields of battle.” Andre Malraux has observed that men are distinguished as much by the forms their memories take as by their characters. In his journals, his letters, and his written summary of a full life, Alex revealed the memories of the man of greatness. We ultimately glorify—in philosophy, in religion, and in history-three virtues: Wisdom, Compassion, and Action. Alex’ memories radiated a nascent wisdom, a sensitive compassion for Man, and a vital will to take action, that men might know a better justice, a better efficiency, and a better morality. His life encompassed, transcended, and personified Duty and Honor and Country. He gave back to West Point that which he had found; and to us, much more.</p>
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-<em>ROGER H. NYE, Colonel, AR Department of History</em></p>