HOME OF THE BRAVE

HOME OF THE BRAVE

By JOHN RINGO
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October 28, 2001 -- BRAVERY. What does that mean?
For years, nobody would speak of it. It was like "sex" to Victorians, it was sort of out there, but polite people didn't use the word and maybe if we ignored it it would go away.

Part of the problem is that it has very martial overtones and in the wake of the Vietnam war, speaking of someone as "brave" was simply not done. A buddy once told me about a girl he met at a party who, after hearing what he did, said: "That's really brave." And he was shocked. He realized he'd never heard the word used outside the song.

Or if bravery was referred to, the person had to be "brave" in a caring and thoughtful way. They were "brave" because they taught terminal children. Or they were "brave" because they fed the hungry in a war zone.

After Sept. 11, we are rediscovering "brave" as a word. The firefighters were "brave" for going back in the building. People were "brave" for getting back on planes. The people who charged the terrorists on Flight 93 were brave.

Yep, they sure were. All of them. But we're still missing the spectrum that encompasses "the Home of the Brave."

With the exception of Congress, every place that has had anthrax contamination has had 90-plus percent of its employees come back almost immediately. That's because they were brave.

Most of them were probably scared, but they were also back at work. That's called "bravery." Audie Murphy, one of the most dangerous guys ever to kill a Kraut, said if you aren't afraid, you cannot be brave.

Bravery is not about doing something that is just sort of unpleasant. I'm sorry, but while teaching children who will die is important in many ways, it denigrates true bravery to call such individuals "brave."

Fine, good, saintly even. But "brave" is the wrong word. They have no real possibility of controllable and irrevocable loss.

And bravery is also not about doing something "just to do it." A guy who climbs Half Dome is not "brave", he's a climbing nut. Bravery has aspects of both courage and duty. Doing a really boss snowboarding move is NOT what Francis Scott Keyes was writing about.

Bravery is about going back into the fire again and again, doing your duty even though you fear the fire. Bravery is stepping out of the door of a C-130 over the "stronghold" of your enemy, knowing that if they capture you, they'll rip your guts out and leave them to bake in the sun.

Bravery is going back to work when you've just been tested for anthrax exposure or work in a skyscraper. And bravery most definitely is tearlessly kissing your son or daughter goodbye as they head off to war. (Save the tears for when they are out of sight.)

Fear and duty are the key. You have a duty to your employer and your nation to keep doing your job, to keep the wheels of commerce turning. Fear is okay, you face it and put it aside. Then you go in and do your job. You go back into the fire, you go back out the door.

I have a confession to make. I used to be in the infantry, in the 82nd Airborne where we jumped out of planes about every three or four months. And I was terrified on every single jump. My mouth dried up. I prayed (Lord, I prayed!) to Saint Michael, Patron of Paratroopers.

As I approached the door my vision would narrow down and my respiration would get faint and my skin clammy. The whole world seemed to turn into a dream, which is how you know you're really terrified.

And I still went out the door. I felt it was a my duty, as an American, as a soldier, to be the best soldier I could be in the best place I could be.

I felt it was my duty to be "where the rubber met the road." I was more scared on jumps than under sniper fire.

Now, every single American is being tested for their bravery. The rest of the world, thanks mostly to our media, thinks that we are spineless wimps.

We ran away in Vietnam. We ran away in Somalia. We shot cruise missiles from afar. We can't use the word "brave" in polite conversation.

It is not just Bill Maher who thinks we're cowards.

It's time for us to show the world reality. To not shun the word "brave" but embrace it. Time for us, every one of us, man, woman and child, old and young, black, white and every other color of the rainbow, to walk into the fire, heads up and clear of eye.

To not overreact to the occasional package with a white powder in it. To go back into the skies and pull out our laptops and get some work done.

Time to kiss our sons and daughters goodbye and set our faces hard to the light when the bodybags come home.

It is time, once again, for us to show the world what it really means to be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Or we can kiss the first part goodbye.

Former paratrooper John Ringo's novel "A Hymn Before Battle" (Baen) is now out in paperback. E-mail: abn1508 [at] mindspring.com