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Kinda coming down on corpses' side here.

And I've been to war, so there.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:

Tibbsy wrote:
There are a lot of roads in Normandy named after fallen servicemen; so that isn't a unique thing.

I'm glad she was finally able to find this out though; regardless.

A 2 second google of the pilot's name got me this. A written article that gives much more information.

This sums up my feelings really, it's nice that the widow had some closure but there is very little special about this man. I see little reason for there to be a piece about him rather than any other individual on either side that was shot down in that region.

I guess the discussion is a bit hung up on the word "hero." In any event, there's no shortage of bits to write about the actions of those who died in the war, and there are many such pages.

For my part, if he'd crashed near my town fighting to free it from occupation then I imagine I'd look very highly on him, too. It sounds like he earned his place there, at least, and it's a lovely story.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

We could use the logic that anyone who goes to war can be considered a hero.

Indeed you could, although that is really what I have a problem with. Once everyone is a hero what do you call the people who do genuinely heroic deeds on the feild, a superhero?

Would you call, for example, SS volunteers heroes? How about the Serbian soldiers at Srebrenica? or.....?

Lots of people go to war for various reasons and calling them all heroes robs the word, and the concept, of meaning.

Like Bromsy I have also been to war (although modern wars pale to near insignificance against WWI/II), does that make me a hero as well?

In my experiences there are many words that are used in the world that whilst they might have a singular meaning in the dictionary; in reality and common use they have varying uses and context often applies varying weights to those terms.

The word hero can mean different things to different people and there is a multitude of different heroes in the world. That some of those acts might be considered, by some, to be lesser or greater than others does not diminish the word. The word is just a word - it can't be empowered nor diminished because its just a descriptive term.

The acts define the person and as such you've got your small and big heroes in the world and there's room for them all without trying to fight it and apply some idealistic complex concept to the word*


So this man is a hero - he's a hero to his wife, to the villagers of the French village, to his family and to others.


*which in my experiences of these debates tends to end up being a personal preference battle between different people as they battle to have certain people/groups/criteria fit the word whilst excluding others that they dislike.

I wish we could just say "He/she did his job and died well." and that would be enough. I think this guy was probably a solid dude. He died fighting, weapon in hand (or close enough since he was inside it). That is all anyone could ask for.

I don't think he was a hero. I think Audie Murphy was a hero; I think Jack Churchill was a hero; I think Aki Ra, Gary Gordon, Randall Shughart, Dipprasad Pun, Simo Häyhä are all heroes.

There's obviously room for debate, but that's my opinion.

There's a culture of singularity that has gotten me in a lot of trouble in the past.

For some reason, saying that "I wish this kind of behaviour was nothing special", meaning that it was normal to be a dutiful, caring human being is taken to mean that I don't respect the people who already act like this.

Billie was a good guy. His dying moments, if they were a concious action, are an example to hold up. People object when you tell them that acting like he did should be normal behaviour though, I can only assume because it then makes them look bad for not being "a hero".

For the people in that town that were there, and did not eat a falling P-51 right on the face, that guy was, and still is a genuine hero.
Sure, for all we know, he may have done so out of a purely self-preserving preference for crashing on a nice flat plain instead of tight pack of solid buildings, but for the folks in said-buildings, that he managed to do so made all the difference in the world.

Its wonderful that she found out what happened

RIP, he was a hero.