I have often found, over the years, that those who gave the least are the ones who refuse to acknowledge that some gave everything. If you cannot understand that these 23 young men were possessed of something unique out of all the other thousands dead, then I can only pity your freedom from the human condition. As Sunela points out below, the PWV is not awarded simply for dying or just for enduring.

Thanks, Sunela. Yes, it would make a great documentary.

Well done mate!

If you make this comment on my blog — http://blacklightarrow.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/parama-weera/ — i will be able to see your email address and contact you.

Yeah, I finally watched Restrepo about six months ago, after it had been sitting on my laptop for almost a year. Excellent documentary. If you’re interested, read War by Junger. the documentary is basically the film of this book. Hetherington’s pix are also in it. They are also in My Friend the Mercenary by James Brabazon, which is about the author’s relationship with his South African bodyguard during several journalistic missions into Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa. What you should really read, though, is Dispatches by Michael Herr, along with Tim Page’s photo-essay, Vietnam. Herr co-wrote Apocalypse Now, and the mad photographer played by Dennis Hopper is based on Page!

Yes, young guys go to war for a lot of reasons, and not all of them are as noble as love for their country, people, or cause. A century ago, WB Yeats wrote, “Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love;” and “No law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds;” and that’s more or less true today too. But it still takes courage. You might skydive or bungee jump just for the thrill of it, but it still takes courage, no matter the reason. In his autobiographical account of being a company commander in the Chindits in Burma, John Masters wrote of the Japanese soldiers he had seen being killed while making an assault on a Cameronian unit: “They believed in something, and they were willing to die for it, for any smallest detail that would help to achieve it. What else is bravery?” So whether it’s running through machine-gun fire to stop a bulldozer that’s going to kill your friends, or stepping in front of a suicide bomber to save a politician, it takes incredible bravery. And it takes practice. You can’t just decide one day to be brave. I think if we were to study these guys, even the ones who hadn’t necessarily shown exceptional bravery on the battlefield before, we’d find that they were still courageous individuals in their lives.

In Dispatches, you often feel that Herr considered Vietnam a great adventure, almost like Hemingway did in Spain, and that he considered himself and his journalist colleagues to be like soldiers. You can see that awe when he writes of photographers Tim Page and Sean Flynn (Errol Flynn’s son, who is MIA with a Special Forces patrol in Laos). He particularly felt this way about photographers who actually had to brave enemy fire to get a shot. Unfortunately, a lot of journalists today want to wrap themselves in that image of being soldiers and “in combat” when in fact they are just observers of combat. Sure, they share some of the dangers, as is obvious from what happened to Hetherington and Marie Colvin, but it’s not the same. But I bet the motivations are pretty similar.

Often, journalists are sucked into the simple sexy awesomeness of war, just like soldiers, especially when they’re amongst the victors. You could see that in the orgasmic reports given during the invasion of Iraq. Page famously wrote: “Take the glamour out of the war?! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that? Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan … Can you take the glamour out of a Cobra or getting stoned on China Beach? … Oh war is good for you, you can’t take the glamour out of that. It’s like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of The Rolling Stones … I mean, you know that, it just can’t be done.”

Yes, I think it is true that young soldiers emulate what they imagine soldiers are supposed to be. It’s nothing new. A hundred years ago, they tried to emulate the classic heroes of literature, from Hector to Nelson; today, perhaps what they see in movies. They also emulate what is drilled into them in training, about past heroes of their regiments, that they must behave in a certain way. I know that for the last 20 years, every recruit in training with the 6th Sinha has heard how Kularatne won the first PWV. They are told that that is how 6/SR men must conduct themselves. I remember being choppered in to Elephant Pass, and being shot at for the first time as we came in, sitting in the open doorways of the Huey, Air Force machine-gunners blazing away on their GPMGs, and feeling like I was Charlie Sheen in Platoon.