What do you think about General Wainwright and those slackers who survived the Bataan Death March?
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They did their duty to the best of their ability under difficult circumstances and should be so recognized. But if we had depended upon them we would be speaking Japanese now. At the beginning of the Patton movie we have this quote. “Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Some of them were heroes who risked their lives to save their fellow soldiers. Others were not heroes at all and that is according to people like James Clavell who was there and from the accounts in the book “Prisoners of the Japanese”.
Simply being a POW no more accords someone ‘hero’ status than attending a public school makes one a ‘winner’ no matter how much the liberal establishment would like such a thing.
I know you mean well but tossing around the title of hero and granting it to so many people cheapens the title and prevents us from distinguishing truly heroic acts from ordinary, everyday behaviors.
Really, if everyone is a hero then no one is.