COURAGE (Part One)

The dictionary says that courage is the “quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger or pain without fear”.  Can I just go ahead and tell you that I completely disagree with that definition  It occurs to me that were it not for the presence of fear, we would have no need of courage.  Revised definition: “Courage is the quality of mind AND spirit that enables a person to prevail to overcome difficulty, danger and even great pain in the face of fear”.

I was reading a story about a man named Vernon Baker.  He was a genuine hero in WWII. Vernon Baker was only 22 years old.  He was an African-American, and he became the leader, and father figure for a platoon of young black soldiers.  He spent time with them.  He got to know them. Most of them couldn’t read or write.  He read their letters to them, and wrote letters for them.  He and his men were in a fierce battle in Italy in the spring of 1945.  Ordered to take a hilltop fortress occupied by Germans, 19 of Lt. Bakers 25 young charges were killed.

During the fight and during the retreat called by his Company Commander, Lieutenant Baker was personally responsible for nine dead enemy soldiers, elimination of three machine gun positions, an observation post, and a dugout. On the night following that horrible defeat, Lieutenant Baker voluntarily led a battalion advance through enemy mine fields and heavy fire toward the that hilltop fortress that had taken so many of his young men, and through sheer force of will, determination, and raw courage captured the objective.

Vernon Baker remained in the Army until 1968.  On January 13^th, 1997 more than 50 years after his selfless act of heroism, President Clinton presented him with the Medal of Honor.  Vernon Baker became the only living black serviceman from WWII to receive this honor.

You know what Vernon Baker said when interviewed about that day?  He said, “I’m a soldier, I’m not supposed to be crying.  It was 19 men that I left over in Italy there…that couldn’t be with me here today, and without them, I probably wouldn’t be here myself.  And everybody calls me a hero but those are the heroes”.

This attitude is reflected time and time again by men who have been associated with great acts of valor.  Vernon Baker loved those men who died that day.  What he did, he didn’t do out of selfish ambition.  What he did, what made him COURAGEOUS, was a self-LESS act, in response to concern for others.  Courage is self-LESS.