War is a time of valour and heroism. (No, they're not the same thing, smarty pants, because...because one comes later in the dictionary than the other.) Remembrance Day is a time when we honour the men and women who risked their lives so that we might one day watch Band of Brothers on an illegal satellite feed.
For the most part, on Remembrance Day we are encouraged to think of the heroes of wars past, the men and women who risked their all saving the lives of their fellow soldiers by braving enemy fire, coming up with effective new battle tactics or throwing themselves upon suspect foodstuffs in the mess tent. However, bravery comes in many forms, and there are many heroes whose stories are not ordinarily retold on this special day.
Heroes like Private Roland "Eddie" Edmunsson, who, at the height of World War I trench warfare, shot himself in the foot so that he could get a disability discharge and be sent far, far away from the fighting. Legend has it that he was whistling a happy tune while waiting for the stretcher that would take him away from the front lines when the mortar that obliterated his face fell.
Heroes like Corporal Emmet "Stroppy" Wilson, who shouted, "I ain't fightin' with no Jew-boy battalion!" before the charge on Dieppe in World War II. Heroes like the members of the military tribunal who gave Wilson an honourable discharge so that they wouldn't have to address the issue of racial segregation in the military.
Heroes like Corporal Trent "Reason, Or..." Ockerchevsky, an intelligence officer who exaggerated the threat the French evacuation of Korea posed to the United States. His reports from the front lines still give senior CIA officials night sweats, even though they long since have been proven false.
Heroes like Sergeant Keith "Doobie" Brothers, who pacified a Viet Cong village by ordering his men to fire on anything that moved, meaning 34 men, women and children. Heroes like Field Commander Walter "Humour-impaired" Schultz, who ordered an air strike on the village to ensure that no evidence of the slaughter remained, then put Sergeant Brothers up for a medal for bravery in the face of enemy fire.
In fact, Vietnam was the occasion of more American heroism per square soldier than any other conflict since the Civil War. Heroes like General Isaiah "I Spike Ike" Jedediah, who kept sending troops into battle long after intelligence had told him that the war could not be won (and who died while singing the American national anthem at a Yankees game at the ripe old age of 93). Heroes like Private Walter "Benjamin" Henry, who spent the last year of his service AWOL from Colorado's Fort Bord, but who, 30 years later, was the most hawkish Cabinet member of a President hell bent on sending a new generation of soldiers to countries all over the world.
Heroes like Sergeant Bertrand "Brash B" Wilson-Smith, who trained Latin American Generals at the School of the Americas in the fine art of extracting confessions from left wing insurgents using only an emery board and 20,000 volts of electricity. Sergeant Wilson-Smith never actually faced combat, but is considered a hero by those who worked with him because he took a fatal bullet repelling the hijacking of his Jeep Cherokee driving through Washington, DC.
Heroes like Major Brett "Sheep Scarer" Wintonick, who, during the first Gulf War, dropped a bomb from 50,000 feet onto a wedding party, killing 13 and wounding 39 partygoers. Heroes like the unnamed intelligence agents who told Wintonick's superiors that the area was actually an enemy training camp.
Heroes like Private Lance "Freelance" Firenza who, during the second Gulf War, got a little overzealous and started subjecting prisoners to sleep deprivation, cuts and cigarette burns - what some might call torture - because he had heard that these techniques were now being quietly supported by his superiors, and he wanted to get his own line on where the terrorists were. Mostly, he found out who was sleeping with whose wife and where villagers kept secret herds of sheep.
Yes, these stories, and thousands upon thousands of others just like them, aren't told on Remembrance Day. Perhaps if they were, young men and women might not be so eager to fall in love with the romance of war.