If you won't say "hero" what will you say? [View all]
The American soldiers I've been privileged to know would turn away with embarrassment at being called a hero. They don't glorify war but they do accept it, even though they hate it. They grumble about eating MREs and being awake for days at a time and how much the heat sucked "over there" but you can't drag them away from their friends. They would rather be on patrol for 12 hours after being bruised and battered than consider allowing their buddies to face danger without them.
They don't pick where they go. They go. They also seem to keep a sense of humor about it all. Sometimes they hurt on the inside, more than any person should, but even then they don't want pity, they want to find their own strength. They don't talk about combat with civilians around -- I think htat's more to keep us from embarrassing ourselves with half-witted questions.
They will laugh and curse in the same breath at the memory of the people and places they've encountered on deployment. They will speak in equal measure of the hope and frustration of trying to make those places just a little better.
Perhaps "hero" as a blanket term seems overly-broad. If we call those who serve honorably in the military "hero" we fear that we make war a "heroic" endeavor. I understand that point but the fact of the matter remains: people in the military endure far more than those who don't ever will. A person who races into a burning building to save someone else is called a hero and rightly so. Yet, their danger is measured in minutes. Those who serve measure their time in years, if not decades and it is the thing they knowingly wake-up to day-after-day.
I don't know if "hero" is the best word but I cannot bring myself to call them anything less.
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