Right - because let’s just forget it took heroism to actually follow that order. Complex thought is really lacking on this board.
So it would seem.
Heroism is not necessarily an act of following orders. The men who landed on Normandy Beach (and I knew some in my lifetime) refused to allow themselves to be called heroes when in their own words they were following orders. They were ‘brave’ and they are to be admired and respected as their deaths were a near certainty.
One of them I talked to 30 years ago, I asked “what were you all thinking when you were in the landing craft ready to run onto the beach?” His response was “we had accepted we were already dead”.
In response to my remark to him that he and the others onboard with him were heroes he responded “no, we were following orders, nothing more”.
The word ‘hero’ is defined by acts of heroism which are acts that go above and beyond what is called-for, beyond what is ‘ordered’. It is heartfelt and warm to think of all of our men and women in uniform as heroes but it diminishes the meaning of true acts of heroism.
McInsane loses his POW status because he prevented the US from going back to get the other POWs from Vietnam as he campaigned to give them Most Favored Nation status. He sold out his fellow POWs for money. He did that 15 years after he was all snug and safe in the US as a Senator.
No kidding.
99% of the posters on this board could not endure 9 days of SERE school, much less years of confinement in Hanoi.
To suggest5 a 5 year VN POW that came home alive is some how not a hero is ludicrous.
It exposes many here as either stupid or blind.
Douglas Hegdahl III had to be ordered to take an early release. According to his cellmate, Stratton, he did NOT want to do it.