Banality: the condition of being commonplace or ordinary.
I’m currently reading a book called “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand. It follows the life of Louis Zamperini, a juvenile delinquent who found a purpose in track running (eventually becoming a Gold medal Olympian) and redemption as a bomber crewman during World War II. Zamparini’s plane crashed in the Pacific in 1942 and he and the pilot survived 47 days in a life raft only to be captured by the Japanese. He endured nearly unimaginable hardship at the hands of a culture that viewed being captured by the enemy as the greatest dishonor a man could bring upon himself. Before I started reading this book, I finished a book on the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresss, one which focused a great deal on the experiences of the crews during the vicious air battles over Europe during World War 2. The experiences of the bomber crews are something difficult for me to imagine, the horrors and the hardships they faced.
“There was an idea, to bring together a group of remarkable people, so that when we needed them, they could fight the battles we never could.” So says Nick Fury as he brings together the Avengers, the summer’s biggest superhero movie. In my life I’ve been fortunate enough to be around a number of people we might call heroes. Yet the thing that strikes me the most about them is how unremarkable, how tremendously ordinary these people seem on the surface.
One of the most rewarding things I have done in my life is become a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the volunteer arm of the Coast Guard. I have had the chance to work side by side with active duty Coasties, and have been duly impressed by virtually all of them. But one stands above the rest in the terms of the impression they made. He was a young lieutenant, a helicopter pilot out of Clearwater, FL named Dave Sheppard. Friendly, polite, soft-spoken, he was the polar opposite of the brash Hollywood military pilot. I was particularly impressed with the respectful and supportive way he treated the junior enlisted personnel under him. Yet it wasn’t until after I’d met him that I happened to be leafing through a helicopter magazine and saw his picture, and I learned this unassuming man had just weeks prior flown into Hurricane Katrina (the actual storm, not the aftermath) to rescue the crew of a fishing vessel. He and his crew had saved three fisherman from 40 foot seas and 85 MPH winds, and had all received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the highest honor generally awarded to Coast Guard aviators during peacetime.
In my current job I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to provide nautical training to members of Naval Special Warfare Group Four, a command comprised of Navy SEAL commandos and SWCC (Special Warfare Combatant Craft crewmen) boat drivers. As Americans, we think of our special forces as supermen, capable of feats most of us can’t even contemplate. Yet once again I’m struck by how very human these young men are. And they are, in many cases, young. Many of them I’ve taught wouldn’t look out of place at a college frat party. Yet we entrust them with some of the most important jobs in the world.
Researcher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in her study of the Holocaust and the German civilian population’s complicity in it, describing how ordinary people can do extraordinary evil under the proper conditions. It seems to me that the same could be said of heroism.
“There was a time when ordinary men were called on to do extraordinary things” a tagline for a WWII movie once said. And that, perhaps, perfectly sums up the “Greatest Generation”. They were all very human. We often tend to over-romanticize the past. The 1940’s were probably a great time in America, provided you were a white heterosexual Protestant man. Otherwise, probably not so much. (That was something about The Avengers movie that made me wonder: how would man who essentially time travelled from 1945, even as good-natured as Steve Rodgers, react to suddenly being given orders by a black man? Then I thought, if said black man was Samuel L. Jackson, poker face was probably a good choice.) Yet there is no diminishing what they accomplished. They survived the Depression, and, at great cost, helped save the world from fascism and fanaticism.
The stories of WWII bomber crew hit home for me. My middle name is William, taken from both of my grandfathers, both of whom answered when their country called. My dad’s dad enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942 and had applied to be a gunner aboard a bomber, but was disqualified for color blindness, and ended up serving as ground crew for a B-24 squadron based in India for the remainder of the war. My mom’s dad served as an infantryman in Army during the 1950’s. Recently, Grandpa O’Neal was able to participate in an Honor Flight, a program where volunteers lead veterans on a trip to see the war memorials in Washington, DC. Here’s a video of the trip, my small tribute to the veterans and the volunteers who made it possible.
For more information about the Honor Flight program, please visit http://www.honorflight.org/
-Mike, out.
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