Underwood - Only the valiant: true stories of decorated heroes

Only the Valiant

Only the Valiant

True Stories of Decorated Heroes

Edited by Lamar Underwood

Guilford, Connecticut

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Copyright 2019 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals iStock.com/RCarner

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN 978-1-4930-3732-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4930-3733-9 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

Alan Axelrod

The nature of war has been discussed, debated, and dissected, often brilliantly, by military theorists from Sun Tzu in sixth-century China through Clausewitz, Jomini, and Mahon in the nineteenth century, to Liddell-Hart and John Kegan among many others in our own time. Yet one element has stubbornly evaded meaningful analysis.

It is valor, individual courage.

Courage is to warfare what the Higgs bosun is to physics: the most elementary element, the ultimate topic, the indispensable piece of the universal puzzle. And yet, as elusive as the God particle of physics proved to be, we know far more about it than we do about courage as an element in war. Well, we do know this much, and it is key. Defeat generally follows when courage fails, even though courage is no guarantee of victory.

In any context, courage is a mystery, wonderful and terrible, but nowhere more than in war. When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), a case of obscenity and the First Amendment right to free speech, Justice Potter Stewart memorably wrote concerning pornography that he could never intelligibly define it, but I know it when I see it...

So is the case with courage in war. Neither Sun Tzu nor Clausewitz nor all their colleagues and progeny could define it, and so we need not be ashamed to say that neither can we. But we know it when we see it.

Lamar Underwood has diligently searched for it , has collected it , and presents it to us in Only the Valiant . This is a magnificent collection because courage is magnificent. It is magnificent when it is at its most awesomely noble. And in this book, examples abound of John 15:13: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. But it is equally magnificent in the stories told here of warriors who fight despite the naked squalor of their frank and frankly confessed terror. Perhaps these instances of courage are, in fact, the most magnificent of all.

Lamar Underwood included so much great writing here, great because it is true writing, unvarnished and uncooked. The raw clarity is crystal, and yet the mystery remains essential. You will not come away from this book capable of defining courage in warfare. You will not be able to reduce that God particle to an equation. But you will see courage, through history, in many conflicts, through the experience of many warriors, and you will know that what you have seen is it .

Introduction

Lamar Underwood

When the realization that somebody is trying to kill them strikes most men, they react variouslyfrom following the time-honored advice Keep your head down! to fleeing the danger as fast as possible. Sometimes another mode kicks in. It comes to men under fire like lightning striking, illuminating sensory channels and nerve-ends, bringing muscles and awareness to unknown brinks. These are men who will fight back. The hunted becomes the hunter, armed and ready to destroy the enemy. Hiding without fighting is not the answer. Fleeing is not the answer. The answer, if there is one, is apparent for combat-trained troops: Kill the enemy before they can kill you.

Where did we get such men? an aircraft carrier admiral asks himself when news of one of his jet pilots being shot down in the Korean War reaches the flight deck. Reflecting on the loss, the admiral muses, Why is America lucky enough to have such men? They leave the tiny ship and fly against the enemy. Then they must seek the ship, lost somewhere on the sea. And when they find it, they have to land upon its pitching deck. Where did we get such men?

This graphic scene from James Mitcheners The Bridges at Toko-Ri , and the movie that captured the story, asks an important question.

Where, indeed, did we get Alvin York, who single-handily captured over 100 German soldiers in WWI? Where did we get the Ninth Air Force B24 pilots whose planes were hit and burning in the raid on the oil fields of Ploesti, Romania, but continued on to bomb the targets before their planes blew up and crashed? Where did we get the Marines at Khe Sanh, called the most savage fight of the Vietnam War?

Only the Valiant is meant to be a book that takes readers beyond the citations, past the words that outlined the acts of bravery, and into a felt life of the acts themselves. Here are battle scenes ranging from the Civil War to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The emotional surge that can turn people who find themselves doing their duty under fire into heroes of inspirational levels, decorated for bravery with our countrys highest medals, is almost beyond description. It cannot be issued to our troops; it cannot be ordered by commanding officers.

When we read descriptions of acts of valor, like those related in this book, we can picture vivid examples of individual heroism. But they are all so different that defining the words courage or hero leaves us spinning under the plethora of definitions. Writers, generals, politicians, and citizens have tried to sum up the essence of the words since men first clashed in battle. Their quotations are stirring, and they show that heroes have answered strange and mysterious clarion calls not heard by those who are listening to words like Keep your head down.

A book could be filled with quotes on heroes and courage, and perhaps these few will help make my point that acts of valor have many faces, each described by the time and the events, each above and beyond the call of duty:

Uncommon valor was a common virtue.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, on Iwo Jima, 1945

It doesnt take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, on Desert Storm

No sane man is unafraid in battle, but discipline produces in him a form of vicarious courage.

Gen. George S. Patton Jr., 1941

It was easy. They sank my boat.

President John F. Kennedy, when asked how he became a hero

The history of our nation makes it obvious that we have never lacked heroes. The causes that propelled them into acts of uncommon valor are as diverse as the individuals themselves. Is it a sheer adrenaline rush that propels the hero to risk sacrificing his own life to deliver a blow to the enemy?