HEROES

(A short story based on a real Remembrance day a long time ago.) 

 

November eleventh, the student body of a small school is gathered in the gym; at one end is a stage with a row of candles. In this school war is not just a history book thing. There is one light for every war-torn homeland of which the student body can speak. There are children here who know that fear and death are only a plane ride away. The teachers know this and know that it needs to be remembered too. 

After this comes a candle for a war, they will not study for some years to come. A war their grandparents fought and to which their parents had listen, a radio war. 

There is a candle to mark the death of six million. Six million; words passing like a discomforting shadow over minds to young to understand. There will be time for true understanding another day. 

They stand and listen to the soul pulling sound of a horn. Then sit and listen to a song of young men going to war whole and hearty and strong and coming back broken and changed, or not at all.   

Then the janitor climbs the platform and stands behind the podium. They know him. He is a grandfatherly man, as Irish as a fairy's dream. A man with a ready smile and a story for every occasion, except around this time of year, this time of year he thinks deeply. Now it is time to talk about what he has thought. 

"Boys and girls, last year on this day, after school let out a lad asked me if I'd met any heroes in the war. I told him I had. He asked me if they looked anything like the heroes you see in movies.  I said no. 

"Since that time I've thought about that answer and realized that it’s not quite good enough. So, I today that is what I will talk about.   

"There is an electrician with the board of education. You've seen him in here fixing this and that; he was in the war. That man is a hero.   

"There is a principal of a school not far from here. You know it. You might even know him. That man is a hero too. I won't tell you why they are, stories like that aren't for young ears, they just are.   

"What I am going to tell you is the story of a young man who came from the same village in Ireland as I did. Our village was right on the border between free Ireland and the part of Ireland still under British rule. In fact, there was a certain street, if you were born on one side of the street when you were drafted you had to go to war. If you were born on the other, you would never have to go.   

"This young lad I knew was born on the British side. He didn't want to go. He was a religious lad and didn't like the thought of maybe killing someone, even in self-defense. But the only choice was the army or jail.   

"So, the army let him sign a paper saying that he did not have to carry a gun. They made him a stretcher bearer. That's what he did and that's how he died; unarmed, looking for lads that had been hurt and needed carrying to safety. He never fired a gun. He never dropped a bomb. That lad, boys and girls, was a hero." 

The children quietly filter out of the gym, red paper flowers pinned to their chests. A short time later half assemble in the lunch room. The rest bounce noisily home. 

The janitor stands outside the school. He has a smoke and watches them go. He will retire soon. The thing is all planned with useful ways to spend his time, or waste it if the spirit moves.  

 

But he will be back on this day. To tell the next generation, and the next if the good lord would grant him the strength, that war might sometimes be necessary but it could never be right or good. To tell them the difference between film and fact.   

He would say that he was only an aging Irishman who'd taken the king's shilling and gone to war. He was no hero. But he knew what hero's looked like. He would tell them that too.