In your opinion, is every member of the military a hero? Or just the ones in Iraq? Or of those, just the ones who are actually shooting and being shot at? Or of all the fighting men and women, is heroism meted out individually, as recognition of exceptional personal efforts?
For example, I’m a little surprised to hear people automatically describe rescued POWs as heroes. Is the military so incredibly different from every field of endeavor I have encountered in that it included no goldbricks, no one who is simply going through the motions performing a job?
I respect anyone who serves in the military. But in my mind, that is far different from automatically characterizing them as heroes.
To ask people who only see the war on tv, and in written text who is a hero in the war, is kinda like asking an upscale doctor’s wife how to gut a 4,000 pound Tuna dregged up from the Grand Banks.
But then again there are some soldiers and veterans on the boards who will most likely be able to answer this Q quite easily.
I’d say I can not answer the Q as I am not there. But A US or British Soldier who risks his life to save another would certainly constitute a hero in my book.
Soldiers sign up in the knowledge that they may be called to action and possibly lose their lives or be injured in combat.
If a soldier fights as he is trained, and kills the enemy, or achieves his objectives does that make him a hero ?
Does going into battle and being killed, automatically make him a hero ? This seems to be the case with the media, who call pretty much anyone who gets injured, killed or simply takes part - a ‘hero’.
Does he not need to go ‘above and beyond the call of duty’ to be a hero ?
“Hero” is a purely subjective term; it’s nearly impossible to answer this.
To be honest, I think this depends entirely on what the speaker means. Are all war veterans heros, even the ones who never saw combat and weren’t at risk? Well, in one sense, sure they are. But then you’ve got your Victoria Cross winners.
What about my mother’s father? He flew 35 bombing missions over Europe in 1943-1944. He never won the VC, but he was at enormous risk (1/3 of all Canadian bomber crews were casualties) and engaged in a huge amount of combat, far more than most soldiers. He even shot down a German fighter. I would presume he is a hero, even though he was never wounded or captured and did what a lot of guys did.
Or maybe you need to be my father’s father, who was a fighter pilot who was shot down in Holland and joined the Dutch resistance and fought the SS for months, eating grass and leaves to stay alive, and was captured and sentenced to death as a spy, only to be saved at the last minute when an Allied armored column showed up and made a deal with his captors (a deal along the lines of “Hand the pilot over or we’ll kill you.” Not an easy offer to turn down.) That’s pretty heroic, right? He didn’t win a VC or anything.
But do you have to go that far? What about someone who was at lesser risk? Millions of people played integral parts in that war whow ere at less risk than my grandfathers, or who were far less injured than Pfc. Jessica Lynch. Or what about considering the importance of the person’s contribution? Pfc. Lynch was very badly injured and might have fought like a crazy bitch, but she didn’t do much to crush Iraq. What about a skilled Ghurka commando who carried out 20-30 missions against the Japanese in Burma, doing tremendous damage to the Japanese army, but never got so much as a scratch? Or what about medics? Chaplains?
I think there’s multiple potential definitions of a war hero.
I tend to think of heroes as those who go above and beyond. A firefighter aiming a hose isn’t necessarily a hero, but the firefighter who enters the burning building to bring out a trapped person has certainly done something heroic, to my mind.
Same in the military - if you’re doing your job, then you’re performing as you were trained. If you put yourself at risk to help another, you could very well be a hero.
If you put yourself in peril for the benefit of another, I’d say you qualify as a hero. Sometimes it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time, but sometimes it’s a deliberate decision. The selfless aspect is, to me, most important.
Most of these responses are pretty consistent with my feelings.
Whenever I hear a captured or dead serviceman seemingly automatically described as a hero, I tend to think, “Wait a minute. What if he/she got captured/killed because they screwed up?”
Note, this in no way diminishes the sacrifices our armed forces make.
There are very few heroes in this world. Just being a soldier doesn’t make you one. It may get you in a position to become one more quickly than the rest of us, but you have to do something dangerous and selfless in order to become a hero.
My husband was nominated for the Silver Star. He didn’t get it, but the fact that he was nominated makes him a hero to me. Don’t get me wrong…he had his share of screw-ups in the service, but that instance put him in the hero column for me.
b. The Silver Star is awarded to a person who, while serving in any capacity with the U.S. Army, is cited for gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force, or while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party. The required gallantry, while of a lesser degree than that required for the Distinguished Service Cross, must nevertheless have been performed with marked distinction.
Taken from Chapter 3, Army Regulation 600-8-22 (Military Awards)
25 February 1995
Of course, we would have to modify the first item to add “or woman.”
So: IMHO as soon as any of the men or women involved in this military action (including civilians) boarded the ship or airplane headed out to battle, that person became a hero.
It was said after 9/11 that a fireman performs only one courageous act: enlisting on the squad. Everything after that is just doing his job.
Let me sum up the general consensus here, if I may.
By the definitions I’ve read in this thread, a soldier who risks his life to dash into the middle of the street during a firefight with the enemy to rescue one of his fallen comrades is a hero.
He’s still a hero even if he shoots and kills one or more of the enemy to acomplish this rescue mission, right?
Now, let’s get specific.
An Iraqi soldier who risks his life to dash into the middle of the street during a firefight with the U.S. Marines to rescue one of his fallen comrades is a hero.
He’s still a hero even if he shoots and kills one or more of the U.S. Marines to acomplish this rescue mission, right?
To me, hero is a frame of reference thing. If someone does something you are unwilling or unable to do that makes your life better, then they can be a hero to you.
So considered that way, it is not wrong for the media or an ordinary US citizens to deem a US soldier killed in battle a hero. That soldier was willing to take on a risk that the person calling them a hero was unwilling or unable to, and as a result made that citizens life better, safer, what have you.
That same soldier might not be considered a hero by his or her fellow soldiers, since their frame of reference is different, and thus their standards for calling somoeone a hero.
In this same vein, the Iraqi soldier would not be a hero to a US citizen, since he fails the “make my life better” test. Given a different frame of reference, say of a Saddam supporting Iraqi, or the guys whose life he saved, naturally that guy is a hero.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think you can come up with a universal law of heroism and apply it across all frames of reference. So basically, the US soldier and the Iraqi soldier can not be heros to the same people at the same time.
Heroism and the official version are often two different things. Two stories for illustration.
Story One: In 1972 there was what amounted to a mutiny in an army unit in West Germany. A bunch of the boys decided that they had had enough of standing 24 on–24 off shifts, and staged a march through the German civilian community and refused to report for duty. A JAGC Captain, a friend of mine, was thrown on a helicopter and sent off to deal with it. He did. Big as life he walked into the barracks, organized a meeting with the refusers, talked and wheedled and blustered and two hours later had the situation resolved with non-judicial punishment in the name of the commanding general, the segregation of the ring leaders and preferal of Special court charges against the two or three soldiers who would not accept Article 15s, and a general return to duty. He did all this on his own hook based on the vaguest instructions. Then he went off and talked the CG into ratifying what had already done in the CG’s name. All this he did at the risk of his own career and record. The CG was happy enough that he put the guy in for the Legion of Merit (a big deal award for a junior officer). US Army Europe refused the award saying that no reservist junior staff lawyer was going to get the LoM. My friend left the service with a commendation ribbon and the gift of a big wooden nut cracker from the CG.
Story Two: An infantry company commander in Vietnam panicked and called down artillery fire on his own position when his company area started taking sniper fire. The commander concluded that he was about to be over run. He managed to kill or wound a fair number of his own people. He was recommended for and received the Silver Star --that is, and he kept job until his people, including good, veteran NCOs, refused to go to the field with him. Court Martial charges were cranked up but before they could go to trial the battalion command sergeant major went to the brigade CSM who went to the division CSM who went to the division CG. The young officer was reassigned from command to staff and the court martials were quietly dropped.
In the first story, a guy did something remarkable but got no credit. In the second story the guy did something that was really dumb and got a big reward. To recognize the truth of either situation would give the service a black eye. It was better to say that there was no mutiny and thus no exceptional act to fix it and that the position really was about to be over run and that it was praiseworthy to call fire down on it. The guy who did remarkably well was just another soldier doing his job. The guy who screwed up was a hero. Go figure.
Personally, I think that being willing to die for something you believe in, with little or no thought of personal gain for doing so, makes you a hero, at least to the people who believe the same as you do. Granted, there are exceptions–being a lunatic, for instance, or being consumed by hatred generally negates the heroism.
It’s hard to stand up for what you believe in. I mean, look how many people here on the boards backpedal when they get flamed. (Note: this is not a dig towards anyone in particular, towards any position in particular, or to the boards in general. Just a general observation of humanity as witnessed through the cross-section that is the SDMB).
A soldier is a hero simply by putting on the uniform. These are men and women who have volunteered to give their lives, if necessary, to protect our country and our way of life.
A hero puts his or her own life at great risk in order to accomplish an act which will save another’s life.
Crawling alone through withering machine gun fire, exposed, to toss a satchel charge in the machinegun nest in order to allow your company to advance, when otherwise they would have been caught in the line of fire.
Running into a badly burning home to rescue residents trapped inside, when common sense and training tells you not to.
Ignoring your sense of self preservation in order to help others.
My definition includes “unnecessary” hisk risk and directly helping others.
I think that anybody in the military or in other high risk occupations,who have to deal with the possibility of of putting themselves in harms way,day in and day out are real heroes.
it takes a lot of internal fortitude to face the extreme fears involved.
even after a person has been put through the brainwashing/conditioning mill that is the military system,there is still the instinct for self preservation which is very difficuly to overcome.
I’m not sure I agree with the notion that anyone who joins the military/fire brigade/police/whatever is automatically a hero just for joining.
I doubt you could call the Company Clerk, whose job involves mostly pen-pushing, a hero just because he wears a military uniform.
Sure, they all join knowing they might be called into combat. They join knowing they could be potentially killed as a result of their chosen employment.
But I don’t see that company clerk as a hero. My definition of heroism echos that of a number of other posters here - to put one’s own life on the line to help another.
Yes, the iraqi soldier in Spiff’s example is a hero. He did what it took to save his comrade. The fact that the soldier mightn’t be a hero to the US doesn’t make him any less so.
In Spavined Gelding’s example of the lawyer - sorry, this guy isn’t a hero by my definition of the word. He did his job damn well, and certainly deserved commendation, promotion, or any one of the US military’s “you did a great job” medals. But this didn’t involve valour or the probability of injury or loss of life.
I agree totally with your post, except your first sentence where you say that you disagree with me. I think you expanded greatly on what I had to say … and did so in a way that illustrated my point, which was that ‘hero’ is subjective and not limited to ‘our’ side and not ‘their’ side.
To Casey1505:
You say “A soldier is a hero simply by putting on the uniform. These are men and women who have volunteered to give their lives, if necessary, to protect our country and our way of life.”
The first sentence seems to be a universal, namely that any soldier is a hero. But your second sentence seems to severely limit that universality by restricting it to ‘our’ country and ‘our’ way of live.
So, my question to you is this: Is a Canadian soldier a hero simply by putting on a uniform? Or deos only a U.S. soldier warant this automatic herohood? How 'bout a Brit, an Aussie, or a Kurdish soldier? These are all allies of the U.S. at the moment, so does your definition of hero apply to them?
(Oh Godwin, I’m gonna hate myself for typing this …)
How 'bout a German soldier who enlists in the German army circa 1940?
Being neither British, Australian, nor Kurdish, I cannot speak for them. However, I will venture to guess that to their families and their countrymen, yes, they are heroes, and I understand this view.
The definition of a hero changes from person to person, culture to culture, era to era.
Not to me, but then again, my grandfathers and uncles were trained to kill this man, and many like him. However, to this German’s family, their son was doing what he believed to be the best thing for the Fatherland, so I’m sure he was viewed as a hero to some.
Taking it a step further, (save me a seat on the bus, Mr. Maher…), in some circles, those who flew 2 planes into the WTC, one into the Pentagon, and one into a field in PA would be considered heroes. Certainly not by me, or a great deal of the world for that matter, but their friends and associates surely counted them among the heroic.
I did not mean to exclude the soldiers of Allied countries, or even those with whom we are at war. My point simply was this: A leader of a government or a country stands up in front of a large group of people and announces “This is what we are looking to do, for the good of our country, our families, and our culture. It will be a difficult task, and there is a possibility that you will die trying to accomplish our goal. Do we have any volunteers? Remember, there is a great chance that you will be wounded at best, killed at worst…”
In my opinion, a hero is one who signs up. What MLS said about firemen in an earlier post can also be applied to the soldier. They “(perform) only one courageous act: enlisting on the squad. Everything after that is just doing his job.”
I tried to stick with the example of a soldier, as that is what the OP had asked. Surely, many other heroes exist, such as teachers, firemen, athletes, etc. Heroism is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. While I may find a particular act or trait to be heroic, you may not.