RECOGNITION AND HONOR OR
INCENTIVE FOR DEHUMANIZATION?
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
Over 200 years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Give me enough medals and I will win you any war.” This is the Bonaparte who abandoned the remnants of his Grand Army to starvation after his retreat from Moscow. The idea of medals as award for bravery was simple. 10 francs of metal and ribbon could now buy the same service to the Emperor that once cost a barony. Napoleon’s medals helped make the empty sacrifice of a generation an expression of the “Glory of France.” It turned Europe into a boneyard.
The same “hero” game exists now. Groups like Amvets have appointed themselves the guardian of heroics, hunting down phony heroes for sport and entertainment. Real heroes are something else, discardable, unwanted and abandoned. A select and smiling few are dragged out for political grandstanding or parades but the real heroes, the phonies too, along with those on the grandstand and all those who have faced combat, all know one thing. Nobody wants a real hero. They want tame heroes. Real heroes are seldom tame.
It has been nearly 40 years since I have faced anything resembling real combat. There was nothing unusual about combat. Vietnam was only a rerun of Korea but with more heat and a minor replay of a small part of WW2. Prior to this, every generation of Americans had been in battle. Americans who died in battle or who fought in battle and chose to be interned beneath a military marker are common as dirt. Every town in Ohio is filled with gravestones, some dating from the War of 1812 and thousands more from the Civil War onward.
Every former soldier, now including tens of thousands are women, shares a common experience. Most of us didn’t choose our wars. Most of us didn’t choose what we did in war. Whatever medals we wear, keep in drawers, buy on Ebay or have chosen to forget about, at heart, mean absolutely nothing to any of us.
No medal can buy back years missing from a life, broken bodies and minds or the lives of our friends. Is a piece of metal and a ribbon needed to tell me I am better than someone else, someone who fought next to me, perhaps even a friend who died next to me? What could be more disgusting?
A week or so ago, I was contacted by a veteran who had a number of signed statements declaring that a Vietnam veteran, a famous Medal of Honor winner, was given the award for the actions of someone else. The soldier awarded the Medal of Honor, wrongly or not, has been dead for years. Most of those who had signed statements over the years were now dead also. The story is an unpleasant one, an officer forging witness statements, an NCO accepting an undeserved medal and an exceptionally deserving individual along with the survivors of an entire platoon, all feeling dishonored and abused, all over a few dollars of ribbon and metal.
Was there anything to be gained by trying to right this wrong? Maybe justice, but the tradeoff seemed, at this late date, too costly. Thousands of medals had been given out under even worse circumstances, including more than a few Medals of Honor. More medals have been given out to cover lies, mistakes and disasters than for any other reason.
Combat is simple. A friend is wounded. You try to save him or you stand by and watch. Saving him may mean you die or spend your life in a wheelchair. Standing by and watching means you may never sleep again. I have been to this dance twice in my life. Is what you do about heroism or about humanity? Is someone that risks all a patriot or a “liberal do-gooder?”
Movies and literature sometimes get it right. What is done in combat is private, for those who are there, never for parades, never for medal ceremonies, never meant to be cashed in for free lunch or a seat in congress.
Long ago, Shakespeare said it, “we few, we band of brothers” in Henry V. Two of my brothers I keep with me still. These are the bravest men I ever knew. Their lives, my life, the lives of those like us, have certainly not been filled with reward for heroism or sacrifice. It never said that in the fine print and we never expected it. However, it did say some things in the fine print, and none of that was delivered either. We weren’t very surprised.
If you want to meet heroes, look in our jails, our prisons or living under our bridges. Go to any court on custody and visitation hearing day. You will hear lawyers and judges decry that heroism, honorable service in combat is a clear sign of instability and potential to violence. “Supervised visitation.” “He was a Marine, a Seal, a Ranger, he has no business being around children.” “She was wounded in Iraq and is now being treated for PTSD. She should have her children taken away.”
After Vietnam it may have been worse. “He is a Vietnam veteran, we can’t take a risk giving him a job, we can’t take a risk promoting him, he is a baby killer, a murderer, a drug addict, a social malcontent.”
At least then there were jobs to be denied.
Maybe we were a scruffy lot. Not everyone accepted a commission, sat behind a desk and came home tame as a kitten.
Funny thing, when it comes time to play hard and go toe to toe with the bad boys, those “tame as a kitten” types are useless.
Problem of late, the “tame as kitten” types are in charge. War is a game for them, making speeches, giving out medals and looking stalwart under those “Mission Accomplished” signs. If business is bad, nobody buying cars, and the washing machine plants all moved to Mexico, we can always make weapons, bombs, bullets and have a war.
Ribbon and metal is cheap. You can buy a life for a few dollars that might represent millions to an oil company. What if those people we are killing, those people who are killing us are us? What if they are a band of brothers too?
Seems like the more language we hear, “warrior” or “hero” or “evil doer,” the gaudier the banter, the lamer the war. Increasingly we are fighting wars against ourselves, enemies like us, working people, farmers, parents, shopkeepers.
I remember when the Marine Corps tried to convince me I was fighting against communists trying to take over the world. We were fighting a people who had never invented the hoe. Was me shooting them going to cure them from the evils of Marxist ideology? It was humiliating enough that I was taking orders from people who barely scraped their way thru 3rd rate community colleges.
Today’s leaders are even worse, more actors than leaders, seemingly chosen for their history of failure and ineptitude.
How do we tell our troops, our heroes, those hundreds of bands, bands of brothers halfway around the world that the enemy we are sending them out to destroy, this mystical evil, the Taliban, is made up primarily of unemployed goat herders?
When a goat herder, unemployed or not, kills a former hardware store clerk, a parent, a son or daughter, do we have dead heroes or a senseless tragedy? When we pass out the medals, do they make us better people, can they bring the dead back to life, can they give reasons where no reasons exist?
Ribbon and metal, lives for pennies.
VT Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
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.
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