WE WERE NOT HEROES

"WE WERE NOT HEROES. WE WERE ORDINARY GUYS DOING OUR JOBS"

I grew up on this side of WWII, in a different world. The men who served in that war and Korea inspired us, while Hollywood put a Teflon coating on the real horrors of war.

We lived in a neighborhood.

We played baseball, football, hockey, and basketball (we'd shovel the snow off the driveway to shoot hoops) In a football game, tempers might flare and a good fight would break out. Then we'd finish the game. Any black eyes could be credited to the game, to keep the moms happy. We went to our homes as friends.

My brother Lou was a better student than me in grade school. Somehow I got into my share of trouble with the nuns (go figure). My parents sacrificed mightily to send their boys to be trained in an all-male Jesuit high school. It was an incredible four years. Lou was still a better student than me.

Then I hit the college campus and was surrounded by closet Marxists and partying hippies. Actually, not surrounded, but tilted far left. The 'professors' vomited their anti-American worldview, using the soldiers in Vietnam as their targets. I drew a high number in the Nam lottery draft and missed my chance to die young before life even mattered. Nixon was, of course, the enemy on campus, and like all myopic college 'experts', I drank the Kool-Aid (and other social beverages).

(For those keeping score, Lou was also a better college student than me).

Several years later God decided to wake me from my stupor and gave my soul a new life in Christ – I am forever grateful for the one true miracle in my life. I then began to appreciate my father and his generation of simple, quiet, and humble soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen who survived but never boasted because they lived while their brothers died in foreign fields. It became an honor to meet veterans and fly the flag again.

Sadly, after Ronald Reagan left office, the cesspool in Washington reached new lows, while the stench touched new heights. My cynicism was in the toilet, in step with the words, lies, and cowardice of our 'representatives'. Flying the flag has become a mental walk through history, and an effort to ignore what is happening today.

Then, I read "Flags Of Our Fathers", by James Bradley, the son of one of the six 'flag bearers' in the immortalized photo on top of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, the site of perhaps the most horrific battle in the US history. It had a type of awakening effect on me.

Mr. Bradley interviewed hundreds of survivors, and family members of the fallen Marines, and wrote a book about the journey that will blow your mind, humble you, restore some dignity to the flag, and call you to something more, much more than today's passivity.

The title I used at the top is a quote from the book - essentially what every Marine told Bradley about their exploits. It is almost impossible for we soft-bellied Americans today to 'get it', and that is why - EVERY MAN AND HIS SON NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK!

Perhaps it will awaken the sleep-walking American male who lives for nothing (well, for ourselves), and sacrifices even less. I am grieved by the emasculation of men in this land, by the whining and childish behavior of little boys in men's bodies. (Why is this so prevalent in professional athletes?)

Mr. Bradley cited the Marines' attitude about all the attention, including the worship directed at the flag raisers: “Celebrities crave and seek attention through their stupid words and behavior. Heroes deflect it, quietly reserving their honor for others”.

So, the 'celebrity' in each of us needs to get flushed down the drain. We need to shut up, work and serve, and act like men again.

In closing, I need to recognize a friend of mine, who was a true hero in the Viet Nam war. Ed carries the same humility and deference those incredible surviving Marines from Iwo Jima displayed. I have never once heard him brag, while fools spout off shallow hot air all around us.

My sons love and respect Ed. We all do. He has earned it. More of us need to be like Ed and his band of brothers.

So, here's to Lexington and Concord, to Old Hickory at New Orleans, to the Army of Northern Virginia led by one of my heroes - Robert E. Lee, to the sons who died in trenches in WWI, to the Marines in the Pacific and the GI's like my dad who fought through Europe, to the dishonored in the rice fields of Nam, to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't know how the suits in Washington sleep who send men to death for unjust causes (some are wrong, some are not), but we know the men who were sent and survived, often don't sleep well for good reasons.

May the God Who rules over the ridiculous rulers of this world give you great men peace, with Him, and with yourselves. Thank you for being heroes and showing us how.

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

- Spoken by The Lord Jesus Christ. John 15:13