Theodore Scott Westhusing

West Point, 1983

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Proctor S. Burress on November 17, 2012:

Colonel Westhusing, it will always remain a mystery to me as to why the entire world does not know of your life. As an Army veteran with no combat experience I am convinced that you were a one in a million soldier-scholar-parent-husband and human being. Strangely, I know of you only because a higher ranking individual failed. Not as a soldier but as a human being.The two were not exactly the same! I am convinced that you lived and died with a completely integrated religious faith, code of honor and personal code. They were were one and the same, completely integrated. Some would say... a seamless garment! Few if any of us achieve this.This complete seamless integration made your loss for the rest of us and your family inevitable. War plus nothing! No need to psychologize even if tempted. Surely Shakespeare wrote those words in Romeo and Juliet for men like you "take him and cut him into little stars and he will make the face of Heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no heed to the garrish sun". There was simply no way that I could NOT write these words in tribute to your life and legacy. With continuing thoughts of your family. Would we all not wished to have served under you? When I ever again hear mention of "the long Gray line" it will resonate in part with the meaning your life gives it. Proctor S. Burress, US Army Security Agency, Chitose, Japan

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