Everyday Heroes: NERVES OF STEEL
It’s just an everyday mission for a bunch of Everyday Heroes. Men and women from everyday towns and everyday families all across America. And all they do is risk their lives on behalf of their country and of their fellow citizens.
These two videos make you realize just how brave these people really are. I guarantee you will hold your breath more than once. The crew already on deck is in a complete state of attention but feeling helpless at the same time.
I decided to write about Naval Aviators and the crews that support them because they truly represent the best of us. They are skilled, intelligent, courageous, and selfless. They take on risks that would make the vast majority of us freeze with terror. And that’s before they go into combat.
Make sure to watch both videos, and have your sound on. The action is as good as any in the best Hollywood film, but the difference here is that this action is real, about life and death. And remember that these men and women are away from their homes and families, doing the amazing to protect each and every one of us from the bad guys who seem to be proliferating like rats in a sewer.
Thank God for the families and towns, schools and churches, and the country nurturing men and women like those on these videos.
http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/carrier1.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/carrier2.html
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Joseph Badal is the author of six thrillers: The Pythagorean Solution, Evil Deeds, Terror Cell, The Nostradamus Secret, Shell Game and his next thriller, The Lone Wolf Agenda, to be released May 25, 2013, in print and ebook formats.
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Everyday Heroes: OLD GUY AND A BUCKET OF SHRIMP
I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you up front who the old man is.
Suffice to say that he was an American hero who rose up from
average American beginnings. He originated in an “Everyday” life and
became an Everyday Hero. I want to thank Max Lucado, who wrote
about this month’s Everyday Hero in his book, “In The Eye of the
Storm.” I highly recommend this book to you.
“It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun
resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.
Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched
in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of
the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow
of the sun is a golden bronze now.
Everybody’s gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out
on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts…and his bucket
of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand
white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward
that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings
fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the
hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say
with a smile, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn’t leave.
He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time
and place.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach,
a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the
stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way
down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the
water, Ed might seem like ‘a funny old duck,’ as my dad used to say.
Or, ‘a guy who’s a sandwich shy of a picnic,’ as my kids might say. To
onlookers, he’s just another old codger, lost in his own weird world,
feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty.
They can seem altogether unimportant …. maybe even a lot of nonsense.
Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.
Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida .
That’s too bad. They’d do well to know him better.
His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in
World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-
member crew went down.Miraculously, all the men
survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters
of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all,
they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water.
They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where
they were. They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional
service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back
and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could
hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.
It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his
next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he
managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and
he and his starving crew made a meal – a very slight meal for eight
men – of it. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they
caught fish, which gave them food and more bait…….and the cycle
continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to
endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after
24 days at sea…).
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never
forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull. And he never
stopped saying, ‘Thank you.’ That’s why almost every Friday night he
would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a
heart full of gratitude.”
Eddie Rickenbacker went on to perform heroic feats. He served his country
and the cause of freedom. And all because one lone seagull made the ultimate
sacrifice. I hope, the next time you are near the water and you hear the raucous
call of a seagull, you will remember Eddie Rickenbacker . . . and that seagull that
saved eight men’s lives.
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Joseph Badal is the author of five thrillers, including Shell Game. His next thriller, The Lone Wolf Agenda, will be released in May 2013 in print and ebook formats.
Contact Joe:
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Everyday Heroes: JOHN NELSON
I decided to do something different this month for my Everyday Heroes
blog. Jim Harbinson, an old and dear friend, sent me an email – which I’ve
included below — a few days ago about a book he had just read. That book
is titled The Remains of Company D. Although the main character in the
book can be included in the pantheon of Everyday Heroes, it was the way
in which Jim finished his email to me that made me go a different route with
this month’s blog.
I’ve left Jim’s final comment at the end of this post, but his point there
made me focus on the fact that the Everyday Heroes I’ve written about
who served in the military did so in spite of the leadership (or lack thereof)
shown by the “leaders” who sent them into battle. He reminded me that the
men who have deployed young men and women into dangerous theatres,
and who have taken credit for the victories earned by these young men
and women, are often the least of us. And only on rare occasions do they
come close to being equal to those young men and women who sacrifice
everything.
Here is Jim’s email:
“I just finished The Remains of Company D, a really marvelous piece
of research and writing. The author’s grandfather, born Jon Nilsson in
Sweden and naturalized John Nelson after he emigrated to the US,
was in 1st Division, Co. D, in the American Expeditionary Force under Gen.
Pershing in WWI. John Nelson survived his wounds to live to 101, but
never talked much about his war experiences.
“Co. D, comprised of men and boys from America circa 1918, many of
them immigrants themselves, fought through some of the worst battles of
the war and suffered very heavy casualties.
“I now understand better why names like Cantigny, Soissons, Seicheprey,
and Meuse-Argonne have so much significance for our Army’s history. Few
of the original Company D survived the war.
“The author’s curiosity about his grandfather’s war, and his grandfather’s
reticence to talk about it, led to years of painstaking research, the result of
which is this very memorable book.
“The writing is a tribute to author James Nelson’s grandfather and all the
other Doughboys; and some history of WWI battle tactics, subjects – that
despite my own many years of reading – I had never read much about.
While portions of the book are heavy in logistical details – which men and
which units were on this hill or in that assault – the author’s research about
the fighting, the battlefield conditions, and the men’s thoughts and actions
is among the very best I’ve ever read. The description of WWI battles is
horrifying. Many thousands of men were sacrificed in tactics from earlier
wars, before the use of trench warfare, poisonous gas, machine guns,
tanks, spotter aircraft, and massive artillery. I learned a lot, and was
moved by the patriotism, stoicism, and bravery of the men of Company D.
No western nation today would accept the tactics or the losses that were
common in WWI. But those fighting the battles then and now still give their
lives for their beliefs.
“Read this book!
“Our country has been sending men like John Nelson and the men of
Company D off to fight for freedom for well over 200 years now. They go
willingly. They fight bravely. And sometimes they die for the ideal of
freedom and for the blessings liberty bestows on its defenders. Would that
our country today had leadership worthy of such men.”
I ask that the followers of this blog remember Jim’s last paragraph, and
especially his last sentence. Characterless, incompetent leaders sacrifice
young people on the altar of politics. Before you elect any leader, ask
yourself the question: “What impact will he/she have on my children and on
my grandchildren. Don’t put our children at risk ever again for the political
gain of some man or woman who only pays lip service to those children’s
future prospects.
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Joseph Badal is the author of five thrillers, including Shell Game. His next thriller, The Lone Wolf Agenda, will be released this May.
Joe worked for nearly four decades in the financial services industry, including high-level executive positions in publicly traded institutions. Prior to his finance career, he served in the U.S. Army, with overseas tours of duty, including in Vietnam and Greece. He received numerous military decorations.
Contact Joe:
Subscribe to automatically receive blog posts by clicking on “FOLLOW THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL,” at the bottom right column on the home page.
Everyday Heroes: SERGEANT STUBBY
Last year, I wrote one of my monthly blogs about a heroic black bear that accomplished amazing feats under onerous conditions and circumstances. Black Bear #56 served as an example for all of us relative to how we confront adversity – a metaphor for humans during tough times. That blog post received so much positive feedback I decided at least one of my blogs every year should be about an animal whose heroic behavior can show us the way to Everyday Heroism.
This month, I write about Sergeant Stubby, a pit bull terrier. If this little guy’s accomplishments don’t inspire you, I don’t know what will. I hope you will share this post with your friends and family.
Thank you for your support of my blog about Everyday Heroes.
Sergeant Stubby
Gen. Pershing decorating Stubby.
(Photo: The Times-Picayune, October 15, 1922)
Sergeant Stubby was a stray, homeless mutt who saved more lives, saw more combat, and performed more feats of heroism than most people could even contemplate.
This pit bull terrier started his humble life in New Haven, Connecticut. Like most strays, he was hungry, cold, alone, and stranded. Living from garbage can to garbage can, without a roof over his head, this little canine happened to stumble onto the parade ground on the campus of Yale University, where it just so happened the men of the 102nd Regiment, 26th Infantry Division were training for their eventual deployment to fight in World War I. The dog was taken in by a soldier named John Robert Conroy, who named the pup “Stubby” because of his stumpy tail. Conroy started leaving food out and let Stubby sleep in the barracks from time to time. After just a few weeks of hanging around the drill field, watching the soldiers do their thing, Stubby learned bugle calls, could execute the marching maneuvers with the men, and was trained to salute superior officers by raising his forepaw to his brow.
Private Stubby had free reign to drink out of any toilet bowl on the Yale campus, and when the order came down for the 102nd to ship out to battle, Conroy stuffed the dog inside his greatcoat and smuggled him on board a ship bound for France. Once the transport was under way, Conroy brought the dog out on deck. A machinists’ mate made him a set of dog tags to match the ones worn by the soldiers. When Conroy got a little sloppy and Stubby was discovered by Conroy’s commanding officer, Conroy gave the order to “Present Arms.” Stubby saluted the officer, who was immediately won over and allowed Stubby to follow Yankee Division out to the battlefront.
Stubby became the official mascot of the American Expeditionary Force and did his part to raise morale among the war-weary soldiers on the front lines. Stubby also participated in 17 battles and four major offensives – including the St. Mihel, Meuse- Argonne, Aisne-Marne, and Champagne Marne campaigns. In February 1918, while fighting in a heated sector north of Soissons, Stubby found himself under constant artillery and sniper fire for over a month with no respite. He responded by howling and barking in “a battle rage” every time gunshots started ringing out. He nearly died later that month in a chemical weapons attack.
Because of his canine sense of smell, Stubby was able to detect the presence of mustard gas before it became lethal. From that point on, anytime a gas canister exploded near American lines, Stubby would run up and down the trenches barking and biting men until they put their gas masks on, an act that saved countless lives. Once his comrades were properly masked-up, Stubby would run and hide until the gas cloud cleared.
Stubby could also hear in-coming artillery fire before the shells started exploding and would give an early warning to the men in his unit. Even more incredibly, he could sense German ground attacks, and nip the nearest American sentry until that guy sounded the alarm.
Stubby also searched for wounded and dying Allied soldiers. According to first-hand accounts, the dog could hear English being spoken, and would immediately run over and check out the wounded man. If the soldier was able to walk, Stubby would lead him back to friendly lines. If the soldier couldn’t move, Stubby would stand there and bark until a medic arrived.
Stubby the War Dog was wounded in combat in April 1918, when he was hit with shrapnel from a German hand grenade while participating in the assault on the town of Schieprey. Despite multiple wounds to his forelimbs and chest, Stubby survived, lived through emergency surgery, and spent convalescent time cheering up wounded men in the field hospital. He returned to action a few months later and helped participate in the liberation of Chateau Thierry.
The men of the 102nd made Stubby a jacket designed to look like an American military uniform. They decorated it with Stubby’s name, rank, and medals, including the Purple Heart, the Republic of France Grande War Medal, the Medal of Verdun, and medals for every campaign in which he’d served.
But Stubby wasn’t finished serving. While in the Argonne Forest during the Meuse-Argonne campaign of September 1918, Stubby was patrolling the trenches when he discovered a camouflaged German spy hiding out mapping the Allied trenches. The German spy tried to run away when the dog barked at him. Stubby ran the spy down, attacked him, and locked his jaws on the man, refusing to release him until Americans showed up to arrest him. For his actions, Stubby received a battlefield promotion to the rank of Sergeant, becoming the first dog to be promoted to that rank.
After the war, Sergeant Stubby was smuggled back to the states, where he was an instant celebrity. He was inducted into the American Legion, offered free food for life from the YMCA, and whenever he went out on war bond promotion tours, five-star hotels would relax their “no dogs allowed” policy for the canine war hero. He went to the White House twice, met three presidents, and in 1920, American General Pershing personally pinned a one-of-a-kind “Dog Hero Gold Medal” on Stubby’s military jacket.
When Robert Conroy attended Georgetown University Law School after the war, Sergeant Stubby went with him. The dog immediately became the official mascot of the football team, and to this day the University sports mascot is still a dog. In addition to hanging out with the players, it eventually became tradition to bring Stubby out during halftime of football games; he’d pump the crowd up by running around the field pushing the ball around with his nose.
Sergeant Stubby, American war hero dog, died in 1926, at the (approximate) age of ten. He is featured in his own exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.
If a little mutt can be this inspiring, what are each and every one of us waiting for?
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Joseph Badal is the author of five thrillers, including Shell Game. His next thriller, The Lone Wolf Agenda, will be released this spring.
Joe worked for nearly four decades in the financial services industry, including high-level executive positions in publicly traded institutions. Prior to his finance career, he served in the U.S. Army, with overseas tours of duty, including in Vietnam and Greece. He received numerous military decorations.
Contact Joe:
Subscribe to automatically receive blog posts by clicking on “FOLLOW THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL,” at the bottom right column on the home page.
Everyday Heroes: MALALA YOUSUFZAI
I agonized over my selection of an Everyday Hero for my first blog of 2013. I wanted the person to be truly exceptional, but that’s what all Everyday Heroes are – truly exceptional. I finally decided on Malala Yousufzai, a teenager in Pakistan who committed the horrendous crime of speaking out against the Pakistani Taliban’s policies toward women’s education.
My selection of Malala was based on many traits exhibited by most Everyday Heroes: Bravery, unselfishness, desire to benefit others, and standing up for right versus wrong. Malala exhibited these traits on an almost super-human basis. She spoke out for women’s rights, specifically for a woman’s right to get an education. For that unbelievably heinous act, a bearded cretin on loan to the 21st Century from the Stone Age stopped Malala’s school bus, boarded the bus, and opened fire on her, putting a bullet into her skull, and wounding one of her friends.
Courtesy USNews.com
It isn’t just Malala’s actions in promotion of education for Pakistani girls that make her an Everyday Hero. It is the fact that she took that stand in the face of the ultimate risk. She knew the Taliban was angered by her pronouncements; she knew they had targeted her for retaliation.
Ehanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said the shooting was retribution for her “obscenity.”
Ehsan was quoted as saying that if Malala survived, she would be targeted again as a warning to other young people who speak out against the Taliban. Perhaps I should start writing a blog about Everyday Cowards. Ehsan would be my first subject.
Malala’s activism began when her home region of Pakistan was controlled by the Taliban before 2009. She began writing the “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl” blog for an Urdu-language BBC website under a pseudonym. She described the regime’s practice of destroying girls’ schools and, when the Taliban relinquished local control, began to speak out publicly against the group’s policies and advocate for rights for young people and women.
Walking through a mall the other day, observing packs of teenagers sporting the latest in fashion and giggling about this or that, I thought about Malala and wondered how she was doing and what this Everyday Hero might do next to promote what our kids take for granted.
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Joseph Badal is the author of five thrillers, including Shell Game, which was released in June 2012. His next thriller, The Lone Wolf Agenda, will be released in the spring of 2013.
Joe worked for nearly four decades in the financial services industry, including high-level executive positions in publicly traded institutions. Prior to his finance career, he served in the U.S. Army, with overseas tours of duty, including in Vietnam and Greece. He received numerous military decorations.
Contact Joe:
Subscribe to automatically receive blog posts by clicking on “FOLLOW THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL,” at the bottom right column on the home page.
Everyday Heroes: OFFICER LAWRENCE DEPRIMO
One of the attributes of Everyday Heroes is that they will do the right thing because that’s the right thing to do. Everyday Heroes aren’t motivated by profit, or by awards, or by recognition. They act out of an internal drive that is so inbred they hardly, if ever, recognize that what they are doing is worthy of acclaim or credit. New York City Police Officer Lawrence DePrimo is just that sort of Everyday Hero.
Officer DePrimo was working on a cold November night in Times Square, assigned to a counter-terrorism task, when he came upon a barefooted homeless man. DePrimo, Wearing boots and two pairs of socks, was cold himself. He knew the older homeless man had to be freezing. He chatted with the man and asked him for his shoe size. He left the man, but returned a short time later with a new pair of boots and socks, and helped the man put them on. This selfless act was captured on film by Jennifer Foster, a tourist from Arizona. Her snapshot — taken with her cell phone on November 14 and later posted on the NYPD Facebook Page, has made Officer DePrimo a celebrity.
Within 24 hours, the Facebook post had been viewed 1.6 million times, and had attracted hundreds of thousands of “likes” and thousands of comments. Officer DePrimo, 25, was shocked at the attention his act of kindness brought him. But what would you expect from an Everyday Hero.
As the homeless man walked slowly down Seventh Avenue on his heels, Officer DePrimo went into a Skechers shoe store, bought the boots and socks (with the help of a discount from the store manager), and returned to the shoeless man. DePrimo has kept the receipt in his vest since then, he said, “to remind me that sometimes people have it worse.”
As for the man he helped, Officer DePrimo never got his name, and he could not be immediately located on Wednesday. “He was the most polite gentleman I had met,” the officer said, adding that the man’s face lit up at the sight of the boots. Officer DePrimo offered him a cup of coffee, but “as soon as the boots were on him, he went on his way, and I just went back to my post.”
Imagine a world where every person every day performs an act of kindness that improves the lot of just one other person. Imagine a world where we all seek to emulate Lawrence DePrimo by doing the right thing.
The source for this blog post was the article “Photo of Officer Giving Boots to Barefoot Man Warms Hearts Online” in The New York Times.
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Joe is the author of five thrillers, including Shell Game, which was released in June 2012. His next thriller, The Lone Wolf Agenda, will be released in the spring of 2013.
Joe worked for nearly four decades in the financial services industry, including high-level executive positions in publicly traded institutions. Prior to his finance career, Joe served in the U.S. Army, with overseas tours of duty, including in Vietnam and Greece. He received numerous military decorations.
Contact Joe:
Subscribe to automatically receive blog posts by clicking on “FOLLOW THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL,” at the bottom right column on the home page.
Everyday Heroes: GLEN DOHERTY and TYRONE WOODS
If you’ve been following my blog for these past several months, you know what I write about and why. For those of you who are new to this blog site, I will briefly mention that Everyday Heroes is all about those who inspire the rest of us through selfless, courageous actions. I use the term Everyday Heroes because I have always believed that every person has the potential of being a hero under the right circumstances. Many of my previous monthly blogs have been about everyday people who stepped up and did the right thing.
By now you have all heard about the actions of two brave men, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, on September 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Their actions while under fire to rescue other Americans were astounding. They could have delayed taking action, but didn’t. They could have made excuses to not take action, but didn’t. Even when they were ordered to “stand down,” they didn’t. They stepped up and did the right and courageous thing to save the lives of other Americans.
But Glen and Tyrone were everyday people from everyday backgrounds, and all of that has been lost in the noise around who told whom to do what and when. So, I thought you might want to know a little about these two amazing men:
Glen Anthony Doherty was a native of Winchester, Massachusetts, and a 1988 graduate of Winchester High School. Doherty was the second of three children born to Bernard and Barbara Doherty. He trained as a pilot at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University before moving to Snowbird, Utah for several winters and joining the U.S. Navy. Doherty served as a Navy SEAL including tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. After leaving the Navy, he worked for a private security company in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kenya and Libya. In the month prior to the attack, Doherty as a contractor with the State Department told ABC News in an interview that he personally went into the field in Libya to track down MANPADS, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and destroy them.
Doherty was a member of the advisory board of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that opposes proselytizing by religious groups in the United States military. Doherty was coauthor of the book “The 21st Century Sniper.”
Tyrone Snowden Woods was born in Portland, Oregon, was a 1989 graduate of Oregon City High School, and served 20 years of honorable service in the U.S. Navy before joining State Department Diplomatic Security as a U.S. embassy security personnel, working under a service contract. Since 2010, Woods had protected American diplomats in posts from Central America to the Middle East.
As a Navy SEAL in 2005-06, Woods was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with combat ‘V’ Device for valor in Iraq. He led 12 direct action raids and 10 reconnaissance missions leading to the capture of 34 enemy insurgents in the volatile Al Anbar province. He served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Middle East and Central America and retired as a Senior Chief Petty Officer in 2007.
Woods also served with distinction at the Naval Medical Center San Diego as a registered nurse and certified paramedic. Having settled in Imperial Beach, California, for a year of his retirement he owned The Salty Frog bar there; he is survived by his second wife, Dr. Dorothy Narvaez-Woods, their daughter, and two sons from a previous marriage.
Tyrone and Glen were everyday Americans who loved their country and, as evidenced by their actions in Benghazi on 9/11/12, loved their fellow Americans. They gave their lives for country and those Americans. We all owe them a lot, for their sacrifice and the inspiration they have bequeathed to each and every one of us.
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Monthly blog by Joseph Badal
Joe is the author of five thrillers, including Shell Game, which was released in June 2012. He worked for nearly four decades in the financial services industry, including high-level executive positions in publicly traded institutions. Prior to his finance career, Joe served in the U.S. Army, with overseas tours of duty, including in Vietnam and Greece. He received numerous military decorations.
Contact Joe:
Subscribe to this blog by clicking on “FOLLOW THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL,” at the bottom right column on the home page.
