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“On Doing What Is Required” – Bravery & Europe’s Terror Attacks

“On Doing What Is Required” – Bravery & Europe’s Terror Attacks

Last updated on: August 31, 2015 at 11:12 pm by Tod Worner

“On Doing What Is Required” – Bravery & Europe’s Terror Attacks 2015-08-31T23:12:12-06:00 Tod Worner

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The Victory of David Over Goliath by Sebastiano Ricci

“We just did what we had to do. You either run away or fight. We chose to fight and got lucky and didn’t die,”

Wow.

American National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos offered that understatement following the attempted terrorist attack on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris last week. Skarlatos was traveling with two friends, college student Anthony Sadler and United States Air Force airman Spencer Stone, when they “just did what they had to do.”

And what was that?

The beginning of the stories vary (the three Americans acted upon hearing shots, upon hearing the loading of an gun, upon seeing a shirtless man with an AK-47 and handgun), but upon recognizing that a massacre was about to happen aboard the high speed European train, the three men charged the assailant, grabbed him by the throat, disarmed and beat him unconscious. In the process, airman Stone was viciously cut repeatedly in the neck, near his eye and on his hand with a box cutter. The 25 year-old attacker was soon bleeding from his throat and the seriously wounded Stone stanched the flow of blood saving the attacker’s life. One passenger suffered a gunshot wound, but is recovering.

When I read this story, it reminded me of a piece written by Robert Kaplan (Five Days in Fallujah) about the aftermath of the Iraq War in 2004. Embedded with the fierce 1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment, Kaplan (serving as a journalist for The Atlantic) would move into a wild and dangerous Fallujah in the wake of the highly publicized killing, burning and hanging of four American contractors. Kaplan noted that over days he would eat like a Marine, sleep like a Marine, travel like a Marine and, simply (in his mind), be a Marine. Except for one small factor. As Kaplan recalls events from the ramshackle, quickly erected shelter in the heart of unsecured Fallujah,

“I had just poured water into the heating filter for a Captain Country Chicken MRE, and was preparing to remove some layers of clothing beneath my flak vest (the weather had turned hot after the freezing night), when RPG and small-arms fire rattled the scrap iron that formed the roof of the filthy garage headquarters. The fire directed at us did not let up…and everyone began a fast march toward it.

[Captain] Smith did not have to order his Marines straight into the direction of the fire; it was a collective impulse—a phenomenon I would see again and again over the coming days. The idea that Marines are trained to break down doors, to seize beachheads and other territory, was an abstraction until I was there to experience it. Running into fire rather than seeking cover from it goes counter to every human survival instinct—trust me. I was sweating as much from fear as from the layers of clothing I still had on from the night before, to the degree that it felt as if pure salt were running into my eyes from my forehead. As the weeks had rolled on, and I had gotten to know the [1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment] as the individuals they were, I had started deluding myself that they weren’t much different from me. They had soft spots, they got sick, they complained. But in one flash, as we charged across [the road] amid whistling incoming shots, I realized that they were not like me; they were Marines.”

Stunning.

But how does one become like this? Is it merely training? Discipline? Obedience?

In part, I suppose…

But there seems to me something so much more. Because, as in the train attack, sometimes one of the heroes is just a college kid with no military training or a 62 year-old British businessman who leapt up to help. Sometimes the person pulling a victim from a burning car is a homeless man or the person who calmly called 911 was a 6 year-old kid. There is an impulse – a call – to do the right thing, to do the courageous thing, to do the necessary thing. Winston Churchill, no shrinking violet in the face of great opposition, once astutely observed,

“Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”

The saints are perfect examples. Fallible human beings with fears and temptations of their own, they assume a discipline in the name of a higher calling. From St. Peter to St. Joan of Arc, from St. Therese of Lisieux to St. Thomas More, they strived for obedience to a God of limitless love. And in spite of mockery, deprivation, pain and suffering…in spite of their weakness, misgivings and dark nights of the soul, they answer the call. They don’t settle for doing their best. They do what is required.

And why does this matter?

Pope Benedict XVI once noted,

“Art and the saints are the greatest apologetic for our faith.”

And St. Clement observed,

“Follow the saints, because those who follow them will become saints.”

It matters because good and brave acts inspire good and brave acts.

And the 62 year-old British businessman who decided to jump up and help the three young Americans foil a brutal terrorist attack, reflected on the inspiration instilled by Stone, Skarlatos and Sadler,

“My first reaction was to sit down and hide, [but] my thought was, ‘OK, I’m probably going to die anyway, so let’s go,”

As Alek Scarlatos said so simply,

“We just did what we had to do.”

Sometimes you must do what is required.

Indeed.

———————————————

Image Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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