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<em>Harry Brown Packard</em> made his mark as a soldier, and made it well, from the day he first donned the uniform as a Maine National Guardsman until his death while a prisoner of war.</p>
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Class valedictorian at Woodstock High School, he won a competitive examination for an appointment to the Military Academy, which he entered in 1926. Graduation Day four years later found Harry, the cadet captain of his company, not only with an enviable academic record behind him but also having captained both the soccer and wrestling teams. He was commissioned in the Field Artillery and married Ila Gray, who survives him, with their two children, Janet and Harry, Jr.</p>
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After service at Fort Lewis, Fort Sill and West Point, Harry joined the 24th Field Artillery at Fort Stotsenburg, Philippine Islands in 1939, and served with this distinguished regiment until shortly before the surrender of our forces, when he became an assistant corps G-3. The sterling quality of his combat service is evidenced by the awards made him—the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Purple Heart.</p>
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I knew Harry well as a cadet, and came to know him very much better a number of years later when we served side by side for four years as Instructors in the same Department at West Point. Yes, all in all, I probably knew Harry as well as any two friends can know each other in the normalcy of our peacetime Army life.</p>
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The Harry I knew was a splendidly able and conscientious officer...a rich spirited, high principled and intellectually curious crusader, whose boundless energy was tempered at all times by an invariably unruffled and warmhearted kindliness of manner...a gangly-gaited walking companion with whom I couldn’t keep in step, but whose delightful and unrestrained laugh still rings clearly in my ears...and lastly, but not least, an unusually devoted husband and father.</p>
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Harry Packard had a truly remarkable capacity for getting done those many, many extra things, both big and little, that others could never quite find time to do—and, it always seemed to me, without any diminution either in the infectious pleasure he derived at all times both from mere living and from the people around him, or in the efficiency with which he performed the primary duty at hand. He loved life and people, and found through both the secret to real happiness—he took much from life and people and relished deeply what he took, but he always gave more than he took.</p>
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I have said that I probably knew Harry Packard as well as any two friends can know each other in the normalcy of our peacetime Army. But how well is that? How adequate a measure of any man’s true stature before God, the Searcher of men’s hearts, can be made in the normalcy of an ordered life? I do not know, but it may be that only when normalcy is gone, only when—as was Harry’s fate with so many others in the living hell that was Bataan and the Jap prison camps—all faith and hope has fled the hearts of most, that a true measure can be taken. Perhaps then, and then only, do men really know their fellows. This may have been in Colonel Louis Dougherty’s mind when he wrote as follows to Harry’s wife: “But even you don’t know Harry as I do. I saw him when older and stronger men were calling it quits. I saw him help others with a word or a boost on the march out of Bataan. I was one of those he helped—Harry walked next to me. We slept together, and one night when about 250 whites and over 3,000 Filipinos were crowded into a concrete warehouse with all windows and doors closed, Harry and I sat the night out together in all the filth. Harry had one small can of fish which he said he had kept for just such a dark hour. This he opened and shared with me. You see we hadn’t been eating for several days”.</p>
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And another officer who writes: “I grew to love and admire Harry as I came to know him through the Bataan days and the years of imprisonment. I marveled at his cool and collected efficiency in combat when the fighting was critical and the situation almost hopelessly confused. His logically organized approach to every danger and every demand was an inspiration to all. And later, during the dreary days at O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, his esprit, integrity, and solid character bolstered and strengthened the less hopeful among us.”</p>
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And writes still another survivor, who was with Harry throughout the long imprisonment and with him when he died: “Harry’s sound judgment, maturity and honesty constantly kept us on the right track ... As a camp morale factor, nothing was as important to our men as the messes to which Harry’s contribution, as supervisor of six or seven messes, was so very, very great...Another rock about which all of us could gather was that faith everyone had in Harry. To win the confidence Harry did among the men is especially remarkable in times when few were willing to place faith in anyone or anything. It is hard to realize, but under such circumstances, many resembled animals more than human beings ... And so, from time to time I shall just jot down a recollection here and another one there—that way there will be no real ending—and in a sense this in itself comes as close as anything I can write in expressing the boundless and unending affection I feel for Harry”.</p>
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I know now—as I did not fully realize when I knew Harry Packard—that he lived his life and went to his death in the image of the Cadet Prayer. He realized, in overflowing measure indeed, the ideals of West Point in doing his duty to Him and to our Country.</p>
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No man can do more.</p>
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<em>—D. A.</em></p>
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