A surfeit of heroes

There was drastic flooding in the Lake District of England recently -- global warming strikes again -- and I saw Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on BBC World News, expressing condolences to the family of a local constable who was swept to his death when a bridge he was on broke under the force of the water. The policeman had evidently detected that the bridge was not in good shape, and had been directing motorists away from using it. Gordon Brown stated that Pc Barker was a hero, performing heroically when he died. I think what PC Barker was was a traffic policeman doing his duty, who died tragically in the line of duty. I really question whether he was a "hero."

Like the word awesome, I think the word hero is vastly overused these days. Every member of the military who goes off to Iraq or Afghanistan is automatically a hero. I don't buy that. What they are are soldiers (or marines, or airmen or whatever), doing the job they were hired to do. That job is an extremely difficult, dangerous one, but it is one they signed on for (if we still had the draft -- which I'm inclined to think we should bring back -- that wouldn't, of course, be the case). I don't think doing a difficult, dangerous job that you agreed to do automatically qualifies you as a hero.

While the little paperback dictionary that sits beside my desk claims that one definition of hero is 'a man who performs brave deeds,' I'm inclined to think that the brave deeds he (or she) performs should be under particularly dire circumstances, that true heroism involves performing above and beyond the normal call of duty. The job soldiers in hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan have calls for them to be brave virtually every single day. But that's the nature of soldiering; that's what it's all about. That and following orders, which occasionally (possibly even frequently) serves as an effective substitute for bravery. The men and women who agree to do this, possibly to the death, and then go out to these god-forsaken places where they're encumbered with hot uniforms and all this heavy equipment in 106 degree heat and do it...they should certainly be honored for their efforts, and dedication to duty, we as a nation should certainly express our gratitude whenever we can, and our tax dollars should certainly be used to insure that they receive any medical care they might need as a result of their efforts, and dedication to duty.

But we shouldn't be calling them all heroes. If everyone is a hero then no one is; the word loses meaning. And my guess is, most soldiers feel that way, too.

Heroes

The other night I watched a video of My Darling Clementine, starring a marvelous Henry Fonda, an unusually good Victor Mature, and a ludicrous Linda Darnell, playing her Mexican senorita (or was she supposed to be Indian?) with a flat Texas accent. The story of Wyatt Earp and his brothers up against the dastardly Clanton family in Tombstone, it is felt by many to be John Ford's finest film. It is a good movie, with many striking shots, excellent performances, and some pleasantly real, human moments. But it takes huge liberties with history...which is not, of course, unusual in a movie.

Just for starters, it would seem that Wyatt Earp, far from being a man of heroic stature, was a not-very-nice man, at least in his youth, and more than anything was a self-aggrandizer, who quite possibly took credit for achievements of others.

In March 1871, in Missouri, two lawsuits were brought against him. One, brought by Barton County, charged him with having kept the moneys he had collected, in his position as constable, instead of turning them over to be used by the school fund. In a separate allegation he was charged with having misrepresented how much a local citizen needed to pay in fines, again keeping the difference. Neither of the actions was ever acted on, apparently because Earp and his father (who was also not one of your more upstanding citizens) had left the state.

The next month he was charged with horse theft in Indian Territory, where he had apparently fled to avoid the suits against him back in MO. He was arrested for this crime, but escaped.

In 1872 he was living in, and off the proceeds, of a brothel in Peoria, IL; he was arrested several times in connection with this, and had to pay fines. Later he was involved with a floating brothel on the Mississippi. He often made his living gambling.

In Tombstone, where he achieved his greatest fame, he wasn't even the marshal, as all the movies would have it -- his brother Virgil was the deputy federal marshal, as well as the city marshal -- Wyatt was just, at times, a deputy. In Clementine Virgil had the job of riding shotgun on the stagecoach; this was actually a job that Wyatt took, in between gambling, and mining. Those were his primary interests in Tombstone.

And the famous gunfight was nothing like the way it's always portrayed in movies. For one thing, the opposing party wasn't "Pa" Clanton and his four sons; it was only Billy and Ike Clanton, along with two other brothers, Tom and Frank McLaury, and a fifth cowboy, Billy Claiborne. Ike and Billy Claiborne ran away, and so lived; the three others were killed. Doc Holliday was not killed -- as portrayed in Clementine -- though he and the other Earp brothers were all wounded. Wyatt was the only one who came out unscathed, which is what contributed mightily to his reputation as a top gunslinger.

The gunfight didn't even take place at the corral, but about a block away, in an empty lot between two buildings, with the two parties facing each other at close range, not scooting in and out of out-buildings and behind fences, as generally portrayed.

While I find all of this factual history very interesting, I can't help wondering how this man who seemed to spend as much of his time on the shady side of the law as supporting it, ended up becoming this western icon. Well, actually, I know how -- he told his highly roman-ticised story to someone who swallowed it whole, wrote it up, and spit it out for the rest of the world to read, be fascinated by, and believe. We want heroes so badly, we'll take them even when they aren't real.