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This is a topic of interest to me, and here is my input.
I feel a bit akward when people walk up and thank me when i am in uniform. I have yet to serve overseas, though that will change here shortly. I know men who went to Basic Training with me that are now home with purple hearts and shrapnel permanently embedded within them, physically and emotionally. THOSE people are heroes. But then, everyone views heroes differently. Those that are heroes to me probably don't think of themselves that way either. A hero should be modest enough NOT to consider themselves as such.
As a soldier, there is a warrior ethos that binds you strongly. Those that make the ultimate sacrifice in combat are always OUR heroes, because it's just that. They sacrificed every bit of their being for those of us who live on to tell the tale. In that way, it's hard to look at myself and think that anyone could look up to me... I'm just a man doing my job. At the same time, I feel a sense of pride in what I do, so I don't let it make me feel "guilty" either.
Through basic training, the memory of my grandfather got me through each and every day. He was a cavalry officer stationed in the Philippines. Though he passed before I really ever talked to him much about it, I will always be proud of his service during WWII. In much the same was as above, I find those men and women who served in WWII to be much more heroic than those of us serving today. There isn't much hand-to-hand combat, shooting people when you see the whites of their eyes. There's distance killing, mortars, air strikes... items with such precision that it hardly makes a ground-pounder like me feel worthy of any praise when I think of men sotrming the beach at Normandy, fighting in the hedgerows or any other fabled portion of WWII.
Maybe that didn't clear anything up for anyone, but it's just what's in my head.
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The prospect of achieving a peace agreement with the extremist group of MILF is almost impossible...
-- Emmanuel Pinol, Governor of Cotobato
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