GORDON DUFF: HEROES: NO HERO WOULD EVER LET HIMSELF BE CALLED A HERO

D DAY AGAIN, ANOTHER VETERANS HOLIDAY

MORE REAL HEROES FORGOTTEN, AS THEY WOULD HAVE WANTED IT

By Gordon Duff

A hero is a person who does something, dies or not, and is defined by that and not the life that he leads and the person he is.  I served with heroes, Marines, none decorated for heroism but many could have been Medal of Honor winners over and over.  None ever considered themselves heroes.

They walked the walk.  Real heroes don’t expect nor ever would accept thanks for being one of many. Medals for heroes, soldiers who fight along side their comrades, is an offensive concept to every real warrior I have known.

This is the time each year we consider the men who landed on D-Day.  We think, mostly of Omaha Beach and the men who crawled forward, fighting terror every second or the paratroopers who jumped into the darkness, many to death, many directly onto enemy positions.  The ones who lived past that day, the lucky ones, lived to fight again.

Their lives weren’t defined by D-Day but by what they did afterward.  We know few of them.  Most of us have heard of Charles Durning but he was one of over 200,000.  Those of us who have seen war have our own heroes.  We knew them as friends and if we are lucky, we still know them as friends.

Every one of us has his own list.  Those lists are private parts of our lives and the people on them are more real, more heroic and more human than the, too often, self proclaimed heroes presented to us.  We know better.

A few people come to mind in Vietnam.  If any of them were ever told they were heroic, they would balk at a word they learned to equivocate with “phony.”  Today it is all we have.  None of us have need to talk to each other, the few that survive, so all we can do is try to explain to others.

The task is a useless one, fighting a lifetime of stereotypes, phonies and strutting fools.

Back in 1969, south of Hoi An, in Vietnam our squad was ambushed by a company of NVA with heavy weapons.  A corpsman on one side of me was killed and another Marine close by died of a wound that seemed so minor at the time.  Human life can be very fragile.  We forget that too easily.

I dived, face down, into a cactus plant. My friend Ed then reached down and tapped me on the shoulder.  “Hey Dudley” (my nickname), I am heading around the left flank.”  I saw him run off to the left, around the hedge row berms of the French plantation we were on.

We pulled ourselves up, the survivors, fixed bayonets, as I watched Ed, now 100 meters in away, break out of cover on the enemy’s flank, two hand grenades, followed by rifle fire.We moved forward, like something out of the Somme, and attacked head on.  We saw dozens of NVA, the last group dragging a wheeled antiaircraft gun behind them, flee into the trees.

One crazy man, Lance Corporal Eddie Lee Harris, scared the shit out of them.  We would be hit again that day.  Harris and I were best friends and still are.  To each other, we are brothers.  To us, we are brothers, one black, one white.  It will always be that way.

We spent a year together, on and off landing ships, on patrols and ambushes.  The only war story he has me verify for him was his 10 consecutive KO’s during boxing matches on the USS Cleveland.  This is the only thing he cares about, not medals.  Everything else was simply doing what we all do, though with just a bit more flare than the rest of us.

He was like that.  He still is.  His life is spent, now, taking care of grand children, instilling Marine discipline that he paid no attention to when he was a Marine.

There are other names and faces.  Some went home, built lives, lives that worked, some not as well as others, but we had the time together we had, a world away, across “oceans of time.”

Fewer each year remember D-Day.  They remember friends, some who would always be 19 years old, dead in the surf or hanging from a tree by their parachute.  Some they will remember through a lifetime shared and many they will wonder about as they have for decades.  “What ever happened to…..”

The word hero never comes to mind.  We only drag it out when we have to, on holidays to talk to those who understand nothing else.  To me they were names and faces.  War is nothing to define someone by.  Only those who never had to face enemy fire or whose soul is easily purchased by the currency of falsehood and infamy drag out the terms hero and honor without discomfort or embarrassment.

Those who were there could never let themselves be a called a hero, not when we left so many friends behind.  Ask this of any soldier from any war.  You will never hear anything different.

If you want to find a hero, look around you.  They will be in the oddest places, working at Home Depot or slumped over in a chair at a VA clinic.  Maybe they are living in a box under a bridge or next door to you.

They deliver your mail, fix your furnace and teach your children.  The real ones, you will never know.  That’s how it is supposed to be.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.

Gordon Duff

Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.

Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

• Gordon’s Archives:  2008-2015
• Gordon’s Archives:  2016-2022