Bravery

I once came face to face with a bank robber. He was tearing down our street with the police right up his arse. There were sirens and lights from three police cars, you couldn't fit much between them. He looked like he was in a TV shoot, he was quite good looking in a magazine ad kind of way. He had a white crew necked sweater and drove with his arms straight out. I was struck by his calmness, he was just businesslike - he could have been driving to see his mother from the look on his face. He seemed to be without any fear at all.

In wartime we can see the best and the worst of us, the heroes and those that just couldn't take it. The stories of bomber crew show the full range of reactions to fear. There were men who night after night climbed into their bomber and one night, could do it no more. Others who simply refused to fly. Punishment for both was severe. Their records were stamped with LMF. Lacking moral fibre. They lost all rank and privileges and were transferred to duties designed to humiliate and demean.

Being brave doesn't mean being fearless. I have read several airmen who referred to one of their crew as extremely brave and yet the man was absolutely terrified on each and every mission. The fact that he overcame his terrible fear and did his job well despite it, rated the man a hero in their books. I have also read accounts of people who were absolutely fearless - although, perhaps from modesty, not many write their own story.

Here are three examples of simply heroic conduct. A New Zealand flyer was in a big bomber returning from a raid when an inner engine caught fire. He hacked a hole in the side of the aeroplane, unfurled his parachute and had a comrade hold onto the end. He grabbed an extinguisher and crawled out on the wing and put the fire out. He knew that if he fell his friend couldn't hold him and his parachute would be too twisted and tangled to open. Yet he went. And survived to wear his medals.

One woman secret agent dropped into France to help organise the resistance for D-Day. She was walking toward a little village and flagged down a car containing two SS officers and their SS driver and casually asked for a lift. She was taking the most appalling risk, each of these men could torture and kill her with imagined impunity and yet, she just chatted to them as if they were old friends. Another story has her (or perhaps another, it would take too long to check) calmly walked into the Gestapo Headquarters and demanded an audience with the head Nazi. She offered to exchange a letter of recommendation for the freedom of her husband currently in the cells below. The coward folded. The husband freed.

There is another kind of bravery that I know of. My grandfather was a Black Country coal miner near Birmingham, England. His wife was the local nurse, his sons and sons in law were away at the war and his two eldest daughters were building Spitfires. He knew the risks they were taking, his own brother was killed on the Somme. Every working day, Grandad would go "Down pit" and dig the coal used to heat homes and barrack rooms across the island and even used to power some antiquated naval vessels. He went down there again and again knowing that as he descended into the ground in the cage, he was completely cut off from the world. He never knew whether he would come up to find his entire family dead or maimed, his house destroyed and all he loved gone.

Grandad will always be a hero of mine, he received no medals, he just went out every day and worked for victory. I am so very proud to have known him