What makes a hero?

(I first posted this on March 27, but it seems apt again for Memorial Day.)

I once compared notes to a Navy acquaintance who was attending a joint-service school with me. It turned out that soldiers and sailors spend about the same amount of time away on deployments, but the sailors' absences come in much larger chunks. I would go away for periods lasting from a few days to a several weeks, but I only had one six-month deployment.

For some reason, the scenes on the TV make me think of some heroes I have known. Both were World War 2 vets who were members of my church.

Bob had been a B17 pilot in 8th Air Force. He flew 16 complete combat missions over Nazi Germany. He only flew half of number 17, because a Focke-Wulfe fighter got him. He and the crew bailed out, but two crewmen didn't survive. He landed safely, near his copilot, who broke his leg upon landing. Bob stayed with him and shortly a farmer came out. Bob said he didn't try to resist. He and the copilot were deep in the heart of Germany and he knew that Nazi police or troops would surely be coming for them soon. The farmer took them on a horsecart to his house. He spoke no English, but his wife began to prepare them a large dinner. After awhile, a 15-year-old girl bicycled up. She spoke some English, having taken it in school.

Bob and his copilot wound up staying the night. The next morning the Luftwaffe took them into captivity. Bob always spoke warmly of the German family who was so hospitable to them even though they were the family's enemies. Bob was a POW for 10 months. He stretched the camp rules as far as he could go. POWs were required to salute German officers of equal or greater rank. So Bob grew a toothbrush mustache like Hitler's and every time he encountered a German officer he snapped to rigid attention, glared straight forward, clicked his heels together and threw his right arm up and out in an exaggerated Nazi salute. Then he would shout, "Guten morgen, Herr Offizier! Eet giffs me grosse happiness to greet you!" or some similar line.

Needless to say, the Germans were not amused. After awhile they pinned him down and told him he would be severely punished if he didn't shave off the mustache and stop the mockery.

Henry was an airplane armorer, a ground crewman, in the Pacific. He serviced the machine guns and bombs of B-25s. He told me one Easter morning that it was on Easter Sunday, 1944, that his unit landed on an island, I imagine he told me which one, but I don't remember. The battle for the island was still going on. In fact, the airfield wasn't yet secure. His commander took Henry's crew to the edge of the runway and pointed across the way to a natural depression in the ground.

"I want you to set up the bomb pit in that hollow," said the CO. "First, clear all the Japanese out of it."

Henry said that they looked at one another, gulped hard, took their Garands and grenades and attacked. They killed or drove away all the Japanese without suffering loss. Then they went to work setting up the bomb pit. By the next day the battle had moved away and B-25s were coming in.

These men, and countless others like them before and since, were heroes. Yet they never thought of themselves as such. After Saving Private Ryan was released, Bob and I talked about it some. He said he had never really realized what the ground troops had gone through in the war. "Boy," he said, "those guys really had it rough."

Here was a man who had flown 16 times through the worst Germany had to offer. He had lost three crewman to enemy fire (two when they were shot down, one on a previous mission). He had seen his friends blown to pieces by flak and had watched other bombers collide in foul weather, killing all aboard. Finally, he had bailed out of a burning plane. He had endured 10 months of captivity. And what did he say about the infantry? "Those guys had it rough."

I think that the real mark of a hero is thinking that the real heroes are the other guys.