The Death of a Blue Angel
Jonathan Last has a great piece in the Weekly Standard about the “quiet heroism” of everyone who puts on the uniform of their country.
DAVIS was the 26th member of the Blue Angels to die in the squadron’s 60-year history. Flying a jet fighter with a top speed of 1,200 m.p.h. at low altitudes and in close quarters is dangerous in the best of circumstances. But all military service is, by its nature, hazardous. About 613 of the deaths in Iraq have what the Pentagon classifies as nonhostile causes. On the second day of the Iraq war, for example, America lost one soldier, Lance Cpl. Eric James Orlowski, to an accidental weapons discharge, and another, Spec. Brandon Scott Tobler, in a vehicle crash.
Even in times of peace, soldiering is not like civilian work. Between 1983 and 1987, 11,216 service members died in accidents. As the Cold War ended and tensions eased, that number decreased, but still, between 1988 and 1996, 6,790 service members died accidentally in the line of duty.
For these men and women, it was an act of heroism simply to put on the uniform in the morning and go out into a dangerous world on behalf of their fellow citizens. The Roman historian Tacitus once observed: “In valor there is hope.” And valor does give us that—hope that, in extraordinary situations, we might become, if only for an instant, more than ourselves.
But the simple heroism of Kevin Davis should be treasured as well.
It gives us a template not for what we might become in extraordinary circumstances, but what, if we were our best selves, we might be every day.
