{snipped from a recent post, attribution irrelevant to my
question/comment}
> who gave their lives in the defense of
This phrasing always bothers me when I hear it - and particularly
when I knew the deceased. When I hear this phrasing it sounds to me
as if the people entered the situation that resulted in their deaths
*knowing* that it *would* result in their deaths - but many, if not
most, of the people whom are referred to by this phrasing were simply
unlucky (i.e. If they had done something slightly different the
bullet would have missed them). In many cases the deceased were
doing something that required a lot of courage and a very strong
dedication to duty - but they were not wanting to sacrifice their
lives, if there were any lives that they wished to be sacrificed it
was those of their opponents.
(Until a few months ago I lived almost adjacent to a Veterans of
Foreign Wars Hall and frequently ended up in conversation with the
Veterans who hung out there. I got several stories out of them, some
of which could be described as 'heroic' - a term they denied, saying
that they were only trying to survive. I then asked them about the
'gave his life for...' phrase - they could think of a couple of
incidents where that was true, but said that almost all of their
fellow soldiers who died were either 'idiots', or simply run out of
luck. They said several times that one of the hardest parts of
losing friends in combat was that it could have just as easily been
themselves - and sometimes would have been if 'being a good soldier'
or 'a good person' were the criteria for survival. They were very
clear that the few cases where they would say that someone 'gave'
their life it wasn't someone who was wanting to die, but someone who
didn't see a way that he could also survive the situation.)
So why does this phrasing continue when it so rarely describes the
events, and implies a death-wish that the deceased so rarely had? (I
know that I would be really annoyed if I were to die 'trying to get a
dozen handicapped orphans out of a housefire' and someone were to
describe me as 'giving my life for...' - I was trying to live, I was
just trying to see that others lived too! Avoiding death was the
whole idea!)
Thoughts?
cheers,
christopher
--
Christopher Gwyn
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
