S.F. shouldn’t forget where it came from: U.S. Army helped shape city

By Carl Nolte, Columnist June 21, 2025 - San Francisco Chronicle

Missiles are flying in the Mideast air, but I still can’t get over the parade to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary in Washington last weekend. It was Flag Day, as well as President Donald Trump’s birthday. The president took the salute himself. Seven thousand troops marched, and the White House said 250,000 patriots watched.

The big parade was overshadowed by events including the huge anti-Trump No Kings rallies across the country, political killings in Minnesota, a horrific air crash in India and the Israeli raids on Iran.

It nearly rained on the Army’s parade, the crowds were smaller than anticipated, the troops seemed dispirited, and the World War II armored vehicles looked like creaky relics. It was all “a little underwhelming,” a reporter from the British Guardian newspaper wrote. The American social media was full of scorn. The soldiers didn’t even march in step, some wrote.

I read these statements with some sadness. Given the way things are going, it is possible that some of the soldiers on parade last week may soon be in a war, especially because a lot of them were from infantry units. They could be there tomorrow, or next week. 

So I watched the parade with a wary eye. Some of it is personal: I used to be a soldier myself, long ago. Like millions of men of my vintage, I was drafted into the Army during the Cold War. I did five years, counting some reserve duty. I disliked the Army — all of us did — but came to respect it.

Then later, through one of those turns of fortune, I did two turns as a war correspondent for the Chronicle, both in the Mideast. I was with the Seventh Infantry Regiment during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and my unit was in combat. I saw what these Mideast adventures are like in real life.

So I was a little dismayed to read some of the comments about the Army and its birthday parade, especially ones coming from the Bay Area. Sometimes we forget where we came from and who we are.

S.F. shouldn’t forget where it came from: U.S. Army helped shape city

Greg

Quick and Dirty for Non-subscribers

Missiles are flying in the Mideast air, but I still can’t get over the parade to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary in Washington last weekend. It was Flag Day, as well as President Donald Trump’s birthday. The president took the salute himself. Seven thousand troops marched, and the White House said 250,000 patriots watched.

The big parade was overshadowed by events including the huge anti-Trump No Kings rallies across the country, political killings in Minnesota, a horrific air crash in India and the Israeli raids on Iran.

It nearly rained on the Army’s parade, the crowds were smaller than anticipated, the troops seemed dispirited, and the World War II armored vehicles looked like creaky relics. It was all “a little underwhelming,” a reporter from the British Guardian newspaper wrote. The American social media was full of scorn. The soldiers didn’t even march in step, some wrote.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

I read these statements with some sadness. Given the way things are going, it is possible that some of the soldiers on parade last week may soon be in a war, especially because a lot of them were from infantry units. They could be there tomorrow, or next week. 

The color guard leads the 2018 Memorial Day parade through the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio.

John Storey/For the S.F. Chronicle

So I watched the parade with a wary eye. Some of it is personal: I used to be a soldier myself, long ago. Like millions of men of my vintage, I was drafted into the Army during the Cold War. I did five years, counting some reserve duty. I disliked the Army — all of us did — but came to respect it.

Then later, through one of those turns of fortune, I did two turns as a war correspondent for the Chronicle, both in the Mideast. I was with the Seventh Infantry Regiment during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and my unit was in combat. I saw what these Mideast adventures are like in real life.

So I was a little dismayed to read some of the comments about the Army and its birthday parade, especially ones coming from the Bay Area. Sometimes we forget where we came from and who we are.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

The city of San Francisco and the region around it has a long connection to armies — first to foreign militaries and then to our own.

National Park Service ranger Fabian Brown salutes as the U.S. Army lowers the American flag for the last time at the Presidio in San Francisco before it became a national park in 1994. The Army officially turned the Presidio over to the National Park Service in 1995.

Deanne Fitzmaurice/S.F. Chronicle

Soldiers of the Spanish Army were the first Europeans to see San Francisco Bay, and in 1776, a colonial expedition from Mexico led by a lieutenant colonel named Juan Bautista de Anza located the site of Mission San Francisco de Asis and what became the Presidio of San Francisco.

The Presidio was a military post for the next 219 years — first Spanish, then Mexican and, finally, an American garrison in 1847. 

The Presidio was one of the places where this part of California began. As the city and the region grew up around it, the fort by the Golden Gate became the most important military post in the country. The was first created to defend the magnificent harbor from foreign invasion, with cannons ringing the entrance to the harbor at Fort Point and Alcatraz Island.

Army troops at the Presidio rode off to the Indian wars, to the conquest of the Philippines. Massive guns in the Marin Headlands could defeat any naval attack. In World War II, the Presidio and Fort Mason were staging areas for the war in the Pacific. More than 2 million soldiers, sailors and Marines sailed out the Golden Gate during World War II, and thousands more in the Korean War.

Cadets march in the annual Memorial Day parade through the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio in 2019.

Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle

During the Cold War, dozens of Nike missile sites covered the hills around the Bay Area in the tense times when nuclear war with the Soviet Union seemed imminent. It was our last line of defense.

The war never came; the Presidio and the other military bases around the bay never fired a shot in anger. 

The military performed one service that affects everyone in the region to this day. The Army was the steward of an immense tract of open space from the Marin coast down nearly to Santa Cruz County, including Alcatraz and Angel islands, with the Presidio of San Francisco as its crown jewel.

Most of it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a park nearly three times the size of San Francisco. It was created by citizen activists including Amy Meyer and Edgar Wayburn, plus political leaders such as Phillip Burton and Nancy Pelosi, but it would never have happened without the stewardship of the Army.

The color guard leads the parade before the 2018 Memorial Day ceremony at the San Francisco National Cemetery at the Presidio in San Francisco.

John Storey/For the S.F. Chronicle

The Army fired its last cannon salute at day’s end on June 23, 1995 — 30 years ago Monday. It was the day the Army turned over the Presidio to the National Park Service.

A bugler played “To the Colors,” and soldiers lowered the flag, slowly, carefully. Then, with a band playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and led by 11 generals, the last U.S. Army soldiers marched from the parade ground out to the Presidio gate at Lyon and Lombard streets. 

A man who identified himself as John marched on the street, alongside the soldiers. He limped a little. He said a piece of shrapnel from Vietnam still bothered him. Still, he kept up. “You never forget how to march,” he said.

As far as I know, that was the last Army parade in San Francisco.

June 21, 2025