“Don’t Call Me a Hero”
April 2024
We all want to be Frodo, but we don't want to walk through Mordor or the long days of tedium and stress that make up the steps of a hero’s journey.
If you ever saw the movie One Life about Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved 669 Jewish children from the Nazis in Prague, you will know why I titled this story Don’t Call Me a Hero. My father’s war experience also touched on the Jewish problem in a smaller but still significant way. It started with rumors and whispers. When he served briefly with a unit whose members had liberated one of the death camps, the rumors grew into actual stories from soldiers who had seen it for themselves. While he did not directly lay eyes on the camps, he did have personal encounters with Jewish people seeking protection in eastern Germany and, possibly, western Czechoslovakia. Although, he tried to help these people while also meting out justice to the offenders; he believed his actions were insufficient. This became more apparent over the years as the scale of the Holocaust was unveiled.
In war, there is a lot of unfinished business, especially at the personal level. My dad experienced situations where he was unable to do something about the terrible things he saw. In his older days, one of his grandsons called him a hero and my father grew angry. He insisted that he should never be called such a thing. In his eyes, he was no hero. Sure, he was part of something big and fought with everything he had to contribute to the war effort but he also remembered those whom he could not help or even moments when he made decisions not to help. Such decisions are hard for us to comprehend in times of peace and comfort (or are they?). The hero moves forward and keeps to his purpose regardless of past failings while, at the same time, remembering the times when he failed to save a buddy or prevent the loss of innocent life. A very personal example was when he marched through a massively bombed French town and heard the cries of invisible people calling out from the piles of broken stones, glass, and wood. He had to keep marching and all he could do was carry their cries with him for the rest of his life.
Sir Nicholas Winton, who operated in Czechoslovakia seven years before my father served there, understood this. He, with the same courage of a paratrooper jumping into Normandy, traveled to Prague when much of the West was trying to convince itself that each move by Hitler was the final one that would placate him. Then, order and peace would be restored. Some even considered that Hitler might help settle old scores without them having to get too involved. My father’s skills were athleticism and training in the use of arms and other martial abilities. He was also relentless, determined, committed, and had a hopefulness about him that allowed him to press on when he could have laid down the pack. Sir Nicholas had many of the same personal qualities except his training leaned more towards organizational and administrative skills. He was a bureaucrat who fought his personal war with the gift of being able to push papers well – and he did it for a great cause. If you are reading this while sitting at your desk or laptop, maybe looking at reports or managing data on a phone, take heart! You have some powerful skills that can be used for great things. If you are a “jock” with speed, strength, hand-eye-coordination, and the ability to endure and thrive in competitive physical environments, there may be something more for you to do than simply running up and down a green field of play.
My father and Sir Nicholas cared enough to commit to something greater than themselves. In recent years, I developed a friendship with a few “old guys” who served proudly in the Marines, Army, and Navy. They continue that service today by seeking out veterans in need and helping them in a variety of ways. One way is to visit vets in hospice and march with them on their final journey. They also serve as part of an honor guard that offers military burials. They show up in fresh uniforms replete with their rank, insignia, and medals tailored to fit their aging bodies. When my wife’s father passed last year in New York, he was honored by the presence of such an honor guard at his funeral. He served briefly in the Navy as World War II was winding down. He was sent to Great Lakes for his training, and as the war concluded, he was suddenly discharged and told to return home. He never reported to his duty station and never set sail for even a day. Some people expressed surprise that he would get such honors at his funeral given the greater sacrifices offered by others. When I told this story to my buddies, they snapped to and with a casual salute said almost in unison and with a solemn and deadly seriousness, “he served.” Indeed, he did.
He was willing to offer himself to a higher purpose and willing to be used in whatever way was needed by his country when it called. This was the same sense of service offered by my father and Sir Nicholas Winton albeit with much more dramatic circumstances and results. Each one of these men would violently disagree that they were heroes. They would say “don’t call me a hero” and I reply to them, “Oh, but you are.”