Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
“We stand alone, together!” This, translated from the Cherokee, “CURRAHEE”, was the slogan of the airborne troopers trained at Camp Toccoa, Georgia during World War II. It speaks to the reality of these elite soldiers dropping behind enemy lines into the midst of enemy forces.
This credo was made famous by Stephen Ambrose’s “Band of Brothers”. This book, later made into an HBO TV miniseries, traced the exploits of E-Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, United States Army from their training at the foot of Mount Currahee to capturing Hitler’s Eagle’s Lair in the Bavarian Alps.
Most of us will never be physically, emotionally, psychologically, and morally tested as were the young men of Easy Company. They dropped into the Cotentin Peninsula the night before the D-Day landings, fought their way through the hedgerows of Normandy, were dropped into Belgium as part of Operation Market Garden, held out at Bastogne at the fulcrum of the Battle of the Bulge, liberated a Nazi Death Camp, and fought in countless smaller actions unremarked on by most historians.
These paratroopers were ever in the midst of the most intense fighting. Yet, the most remarkable thing was not their manifold heroisms. Most notable was that their uncommon valor was genuinely not uncommon. Uncounted millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coasties, Americans and Allies, did what was necessary to defeat German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese Imperialism “for the duration”.
We live in a nation and in a world whose every benefit was purchased by the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of our ancestors, both the honored and the unremembered. Every good thing we possess, each opportunity to decide for ourselves the direction and character of our lives, came from a precise set of historical events.
Without exception, our all-too-fallible ancestors were faced with a choice between surrender and war, between compliance and resistance. Again and again, despite their love for their own lives and eagerness for peace, a critical number chose to do what was right instead of what was easy. Their sacrifices, made in service to loved ones, liberty, and God, produced every blessing we now enjoy.
This rich inheritance is not for the living generations to squander in endless selfindulgences. The point of this heritage was not to give each of us a material paradise of uninterrupted joy. The efforts of every prior generation were not made for us, the current inhabitants of the Earth.
As our cultural and physical ancestors did, we find our best destiny in conserving the best from the past, adding to it, and passing it on to posterity. We are not merely ends unto ourselves. We can aspire to be means to a greater end; the betterment of humanity.
Today, all of this is at risk. Right now, we each face constant choices between integrity and expedience. Cynics call us consumers, the masses, and manipulatable human resources. As they endeavor to discern the future, they bank on the lowest common denominator of human nature prevailing. Such people cannot believe in citizens behaving in a fashion worthy of their freedom. We are free despite such people, not because of them.
In this fraught historical moment we, the living, stand alone. Our ancestors have passed. Our descendants are yet to be. However, like those magnificent Screaming Eagles of Easy Company, we can stand alone together as we each shoulder our burdens of responsibility to make a world worth living in for our successors.
