We give them up, one by one. Bo Diddley. Another favorite, Yves St. Laurant. Some good things, a flight to D.C. full of veterans coming to see the War Memorial, I cried with them as the band played in greeting and folks cheered them on. And a medal for the parents of a twenty year-old hero in Iraq, diving on a grenade tossed into his tank thus saving his four buddies.
What makes a person become someone who can do that?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I’m sure your question was a rhetorical one, but I was writing about something similar to this just last night. I don’t think there is anything else that compares to the military experience and being far from home. The farther from home, and the more austere and dangerous the circumstances, the more important those you are with become, to the exclusion of everyone else on earth. Still, I don’t know that everyone has it within him to react and to dive on top of a hand grenade even under those circumstances.
It just astounded–and saddened–me. The loss of any life is sad but unfortunately, inevitable. But a young man such as this, who did all those 80-plus year old veterans proud, as well as his family and any American who truly feels proud to be one, to lose one such as him is exceptionally tragic. What would he have become? Surely a leader.