Dear Editor:
In my eternal war on the use of language by America today, I will attack “heroes.”
I landed in Omaha Beach a few days after D-Day. Through no fault of my own, I traveled through practically every country in Europe but not Italy. The army must have conspired for that to happen because other than American, Italian is one language I could have communicated freely with besides perhaps meeting some of my parents’ family who lived there during WWII. The two years of French I learned in school, and I was getting the second highest grade in French class, did absolutely nothing to understand the French or them to understand me. They talk too fast anyway!
I remember Europe only as far as you can experience from a woods, forest, foxhole or a quickly moving truck passing through little devastated towns or villages or mostly from a front line infantry position where the bullets and shells were plentiful.
I must have fought in many battles because when I was discharged I had a good conduct medal, five battle stars and one bronze star medal that someone, five years after leaving the service, notified me they had overlooked awarding me. They’re all in one of my drawers, I know not which, and never dwell on. I classify that experience as something they had controlled and no decision of mine. To really be a hero I believe someone has to make a decisive sacrifice beyond being put in a situation and more or less following orders. Today I like to think myself other than a blind robot and pretty much make my own bed and decisions. I think this is something closer to being heroic in a world I see as almost void of idealism.
My reward hunger ended when I realized I had helped keep control of our country through victory and could have a safer place to rebuild my life and the years I felt deprived me of many advancements to any career I might have qualified for.
I sometimes get nausea with the unending military bull from people who always live in the past, never stop congratulating themselves for what the country owes them and are easily recognizable by continuing to walk around with their hand out, looking for veterans’ rewards. If you look back today on how many wars our country has either entered or perpetrated who the hell can be left that is not a veteran of some conflict or other. Isn’t having your own land reward enough? Where would we get the funds to pay off the many earned or unearned veterans’ claims? To add to the idiocy I doubt if in the near future there will not be another batch of veterans. The foreign policy we are pursuing will make us very substantial contributors to triggering WWIII. The one to end it all. Some of you flag wavers ought to start giving and not forever gimmying.
To get back to heroes, in order to position myself well, I will go to my rabbi. Instead of getting inducted into the infantry, I suddenly wind up as, usually, an officer with rank and higher pay and the unquestioning slob has to take the place you would have normally occupied; does that make you heroic?
Supposing you get a commission and far away from the daily bullets and muddy sleeping quarters a foxhole affords you, you find yourself flying an Air Corps bomber. One day on a bombing mission to destroy guilty or non-guilty personnel obeying their country’s call to protect their homeland, you happen to get shot down and taken prisoner for many years. Finally on arriving home you get overwhelmed with unending fanfare for something you never decided to do in the first place. To add to the insult, to probably the poor slob in the trenches, if he survived or worse came home with a limb missing or in a psychiatric ward from battle fatigue, you get promoted to a position to run for the highest public office in the land and all through mostly accident. And we call that heroic or a big hero. Not in my ability to understand language.
And that ends another of my personal vendettas on the use of American idea of language and the misuse of words. It will be our downfall. The rewarding of medals for just being there by accident has made it a comedic farce. Everybody is a hero for living.
Angelo Nanfro