A FEW FINAL WORDS
This is a question that has confronted authors, poets,
and the military for centuries. Courage has
been analysed, and divided
into categories. There is fortitude, physical courage, moral courage, heroism--the
labels abound, and the categories are indistinct, and blend into each other
like watercolors. Frequently, through the media, we are made aware of some
brilliant heroic act--a firefighter pulls
children from a burning building,
a pilot guides his crashing airplane away from an airshow audience, a soldier
boldly faces death to carry out a mission or save the lives of others.
Heroes come from all walks of life. Frequently they go undecorated, and
even unnoticed. Less
spectacular acts of heroism--the father who works
two jobs to make a better life for his children, a passerby who assists
at an auto accident and then fades away when all is well, even the child
who scoops a drowning butterfly from a puddle to dry and fly again--are
around us every day. When I first contacted Tom Barker, I was simply praising
his World War II memoirs, which I had
read at Bob Cull's World War 2 website,
and asking if he could answer a couple of questions for me. It was the
sort of letter that Tom could have responded to formally, answering the
questions briefly and then having no further contact. Instead, he replied
with a warm letter laced with humor, where he answered my questions and
offered further assistance in any way he could. And he has, corresponding
daily, answering my voluminous questions, getting to know me and my family
and acquainting us with his. Tom has a wife and five grown children, as
well as grandchildren, but his motto seems to be "room for one more".
He has written what he calls "yarns" to help me with my WWII
research, even when they are about subjects I am sure he finds painful
to recall. He has also sent photographs, his own paintings, and a lot of
concern and love over the telephone lines, from his computer to ours. To
me, it is this "going the extra" mile that makes the everyday
hero. Tom enlisted in the military as a
very young man, and probably didn't
expect the life that it led him into. He might have whined and felt sorry
for himself, but instead he went ahead in businesslike manner, and set
about to do the job well and honorably. After becoming a prisoner of war,
he faced the rigors and deprivations of a number of German stalags with
fortitude, humor and grace. He used his mechanical and artistic abilities
to make items for his fellow prisoners, and he risked his life to sabotage
enemy trains. Even now, he is matter of fact and staunch in his references
to the nightmares and wakefulness that are the legacy of many soldiers,
and he never lets the soldiers who did not have the privilege of returning
home go forgotten. As you read through Tom's stories, you will see many examples of
his quiet heroism--his humor, his
inventiveness, his sensitivity, and most
of all, his compassion for others. He is the very young soldier who stopped
under enemy fire to aid a comrade with a mortal wound. He is also the still
young, but much more seasoned soldier and prisoner of war, who could not
leave a grieving Russian POW crouching over his dead companion in the snow--so
Tom gave him what he could, a packet of biscuits, which had to be a precious
commodity to a prisoner of war who was also still very much a youth. And
of course he risked punishment, or even death, for extending this comfort.
That is how I see him, now that I've come to know him--as that young British
soldier in a German
stalag, standing in the snow, cold, gaunt, throwing
a treasured packet of sweets to another prisoner whom he could comfort
in no other way. Proud, honorable, upright, caring--a hero.
