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And I've never heard a hero BRAG about his combat record. Just isn't done.

This is why I think Kerry is a phony. No one I ever knew who was in tough, life-threatening combat would ever run off at the mouth about it like Kerry does.

And I have known many war heroes. I'll start with my Dad, who was in the second wave ashore at Normandy on D-Day. As much as I pleaded with him, he wouldn't talk to me about it. He made it from there to the Rhine and was in any number of hot combat situations, but would never speak of them unless prodded to do so.

His brother was in the Navy and was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th. Then was on the radar picket line during the waves of kamikazes. He only talked about it once when we were watching a "Victory At Sea" episode.

Another uncle was a turret gunner on the B-29s that flew raids in the Pacific. He survived a crash on landing that knocked him and one other crewmember out of the plane as it cartwheeled and exploded down the runway, breaking his arm and some ribs. They were the only survivors. The one and only time he ever talked about it was to relate that incident to us, although I always wondered how he was wounded in the war.

So when I hear these ersatz "heroes" like John Kerry piping up, I have to hold my tongue, lest my anger and disgust at their feigned "heroism" lead me to actions I'll later regret.

Heroes don't brag. Here's an example--a friend of mine introduced me to an older gentleman he knew, a really nice guy. Since the older guy knew that me and my friend were both World War II aviation freaks, he opened up to us about his service. This guy flew 24 missions as a B-24 bombardier with the Fifteenth Air Force out of somewhere in Italy late in the war, hitting targets in northern Italy, Austria, and southern Germany.

He told us some amazing stuff. About how they literally locked the nose turret gunners in their tiny space and how that gunner could not escape to bail out unless somebody let him out. About the flak they faced over the target. About how they did their bomb runs and how the bombsight worked (most bombardiers didn't even use the bombsight, they dropped on cue from aircraft in front of them). He brought us a bunch of stuff to look at--charts, bomb damage assessment photos, newspaper clippings, pictures, even the factory packer's card for a German fighter pilot's parachute. Amazing.

On his 24th mission, they had a bomb hang up in the bomb bay. He had to take off his parachute due to lack of room, go stand on a six-inch-wide girder 10,000 feet over the Adriatic (remember, no parachute), and start swinging a fire axe at the jammed shackles holding a live, armed 500-pound high explosive bomb in place. He couldn't get it loose. When the B-24 landed back in Italy, it came down hard due to hydraulic damage caused by flak, and ran off the end of the runway...at which point the bomb shook loose and exploded under the airplane, blowing it in two. Miraculously, they only lost one guy crushed in the nose section, but everybody else was hurt.

We went to see a B-17 and B-24 at an airshow and he was showing us around talking about the airplanes, joking with other aircrewmen that he ran into. His own daughter had never heard any of this stuff. She was flabbergasted.

And to look at this guy, he was just another old man. Short, wiry, lively in his 70s, married to the same woman for 50 years, raised a couple of good kids and had a passel of grandkids...a good life. But before that, he had to fly into and out of hell twenty-four times. And he did it, very professionally and matter-of-factly. No bravado. No macho, no posturing. It was just his job.

Nope. Heroes don't need to brag.

}:-)4