Great American Stories: Glenn Miller’s Quote

Good morning. It’s Friday, Dec. 15, and the day the week when I share a quotation intended to be informative or enlightening. We are 10 days from Christmas, and although what I’m about to say is true anytime of the year, it’s especially true in this season: The sounds of music and not the sounds of bombs is what children, and all of God’s creatures, should be hearing.

Today’s words come from a medal citation for Glenn Miller, whose single-engine plane went down over the English Channel 79 years ago today. The famed American band leader was en route to France to perform for the U.S. troops that had liberated Paris.

Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, a swing band formed in 1938, was at its most popular when the United States entered World War II. Besides regularly churning out gold records, Miller landed movie roles in 1941 and 1942, and was signed up for a third. But like film star Jimmy Stewart, who would later star as the bandleader in “The Glenn Miller Story,” Miller was itching to do his part.

In 1942, the United States Navy rejected the 38-year-old musician. But Miller appealed to the U.S. Army, promising to play music to the troops. His offer was accepted, and he performed hundreds of gigs for troops over the next two years. By mid-1944, Gen. James Doolittle praised him by saying, “Next to a letter from home, Captain Miller, your organization is the greatest morale builder in the European Theater of Operations.”

Miller had been promoted to major by the time he took off from an airfield near Bedford on his last, ill-fated flight. Neither his body nor the plane were ever found. Some say the wings were covered with ice, forcing it into the sea; others believe British pilots jettisoning bombs as they returned to England inadvertently knocked it out of the sky. The Germans pushed a fanciful story that Miller survived and died of a heart attack in a Paris bordello. Although this was meant to be spiteful, even all these years later it’s a comforting thought, at least to me.

But really, it was always about the music with Glenn Miller, as this excerpt from his Bronze Star citation captured perfectly:

“Major Miller, through excellent judgment and professional skill, conspicuously blended the abilities of the outstanding musicians, comprising the group, into a harmonious orchestra whose noteworthy contribution to the morale of the armed forces has been little less than sensational.”

Those words have applications for life outside the military, and outside the theater of war itself. The music of any “harmonious orchestra” can be an antidote to war, if we let it. In any event, that is our quote of the week.

This article was originally published by RealClearPublicAffairs and made available via RealClearWire.