What Makes a Hero?

US society and its military.

This special documentary makes reference to some distressing

historical events.

This is a story about the word "hero".

Who uses it?

Who's called it?

Less than 1% of Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the

support for them is unequivocal.

They are lauded in speeches, they are thanked for their service,

they are called heroes.

To honour you, the heroes.

So why are some vets pushing back against this?

Many veterans of our generation really balk

at the term hero, saying, no, I was just doing my job.

I've done it, I've stopped doing it.

We don't need parades and celebrations, we need people to give

us an opportunity when we come home.

It often makes the veterans themselves feel uncomfortable.

I'd be embarrassed if someone called me a hero

for joining the Marine Corps.

There's also a sense of guilt that comes with it, I think.

They worry the word is becoming devalued.

That it takes away from true heroes.

That it obscures real issues that need to be addressed.

But what does this mean for the relationship

between civilians and veterans?

Are we going to push back too hard that we swing the other way, where

it's like, well, screw you guys?

I had a close friend, we had children exactly the same age, so,

you know, Barry and I helped coach the soccer team together.

We knew each other for about eight or ten years.

Sleepovers with the kids overnight.

One evening, the wives were talking and realised their husbands

had both been Marines in Vietnam.

We were both Marines in Vietnam and didn't know it

for eight or ten years.

That was the atmosphere back then.

We never talked about being in the Vietnam War.

You kept your mouth shut.

Did society use the word hero at all?

How was it used in the context?

No.

# How beautiful our heroes proved #.

It's to the country's credit they don't do that any more.

The pendulum may have swung too far.

Now everybody is a hero instead of a villain.

That's not true either.

I think all of them, all the veterans are here

because they volunteer alone, just to keep our safety here back home.

That's why we have Veterans Day, to celebrate the heroes and they can

talk about them and raise them up.

It's someone who puts their country ahead of themselves.

Are they heroes to you?

Absolutely, everyday of the week.

There's this thing that's been happening over the past few years,

where you get veterans becoming more vocal and pushing back

on the hero label.

It's really important that veterans, we make this messy.

We make those conversations messy and complicated and nuanced,

because that's what people are.

OK, so I'm a veteran, I served with the Marine Corps in Iraq back during

the beginning of the war in 2003.

And I do find these messy conversation is really difficult,

And I do find these messy conversations really difficult,

it's like sometimes you don't know what way to think,

it's like a tug of war.

That happens a lot, especially when someone thanks you for your service.

This is what goes through my mind.

I get snapped out of the moment and there's this intense flood

of memories about what it meant to serve,

the good times, the hardships, what it meant for my family.

I think of the Marines I knew who didn't come home.

And I realise I'm expected to respond, but what do I say?

I want to do those memories justice but that would mean sitting down and

talking for hours with a stranger.

But then that feels like I'm not doing all those intense

memories justice and I feel guilty.

Then I feel ungrateful.

You can sniff out very quickly where the impetus behind the question is

coming from and if it's coming from a flippant or shallow place, that's

deeply frustrating, but if it's coming from an earnest place,

genuine place, maybe they don't

know what else to do.

A lot of us say, don't call us hero, don't thank us for our service,

you feel awkward when somebody says that to you, which I totally get.

The same token, are we going to push back too hard that we swing the

other way where it's like, screw you

other way where it's like, screw you guys?

Last year there was a big survey of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

42% said they didn't think civilian respect

for the military was genuine.

About 70% said they often felt misunderstood.

But almost the same number also said they felt appreciated.

So that's what makes this so complex.

These are people's lives we are talking about

and how we interpret, we as civilians interpret, their

lives, impacts them and their ability to carry forward on a daily

basis.

He was a councillor to veterans and he also studies heroism.

Veterans are not fragile people, but they have had very complex

experiences so we need to be a society that is in conversation with

our veterans, not telling them, you are a hero, or you are not a hero.

Let's start at the beginning.

The dictionary defines hero as an illustrious warrior,

one that shows great courage.

But I wanted to know where our idea of what a hero is even came from.

What I started doing when I was researching heroes was to go back to

the ancient Greeks, in particular to Achilles, and the Trojan War.

Achilles is the kind of hero par excellence.

He is the best warrior, the fastest, he tears through the enemy.

He's not doing it on behalf of someone else, for him,

the idea is simply to be great.

Fast forward 800 years.

To a jail cell.

Socrates on trial for practising philosophy.

It's where he turns down an opportunity to escape.

He says, I have to follow the laws, I want to lead by example

in some sense, show people they are wrong about what they think, about

philosophy, that it's dangerous.

He says, I have to do this for them, but also for future philosophers.

He sacrifices his life for other people, for an ideal,

that is where Cohen thinks our modern interpretation

of heroism comes from.

Even in war it's not enough for us now to go and kill 50 people,

right, that's very impressive, that an Achilles level of impressive.

But we even want our great warriors to end up sacrificing for others.

The criteria have shrunk.

But the usage of the word seems to be growing.

Right, I think that's exactly right.

OK, so that's the Socrates hero story, and it's pretty cut and dry,

he's just a really selfless guy.

Here's a more complicated story and it starts with the idea that

you never hear people say they actually want to become a hero or

that they want to earn medals.

But that's exactly what was on the mind of 22-year-old

Marine Karl Marlantes in 1968.

My guess is if a young man doesn't think about

doing something heroic in battle, I think it would be highly unusual.

Of course I thought about it.

I imagine you'd like to be John Wayne, too.

But as it turned out, that desire would haunt him

for the rest of his life.

The Bronze Star was on an assault and I was the company XO.

As the rifle company moved forward, Karl heard a young Marine cry out

that he'd been hit.

I had the idea, you know, I can go get him.

There was a double motive, the first motive was I really liked

this guy, had to get him out from the machine gun, that was noble.

The second, I thought it would be pretty neat if I got a medal.

It occurred to me, I went, whoa!

Karl charged up the hill alone.

He kept firing to keep the enemy machine gunners at bay.

And when he reached the wounded Marine, Karl pulled him

down the hill to safety.

Then the medic arrived.

I still get quite sad about this after all these years.

I remember Yankee trying to give him artificial respiration and the kid

was vomiting, so Yankee would get vomit and spit from it out and blow

was vomiting, so Yankee would get vomit and spit vomit out and blow

air into him and suck vomit out.

Then Doc Yankee looked at me and he said oh no.

And he pulled the kid's head back and there was

a bullet hole right in his head.

He said, he's not going to make it.

That night, it occurred to me that he had said, I'm hit.

How could he say "I'm hit" with a bullet in his head?

There was no way I could find out.

If, in fact, the bullet in his head hadn't been the one I

put there when I was trying to keep the machine gunners down.

And I'll never know to this day.

The lesson drawn from that is, I would feel way less sad about it,

conflicted about it, if I'd done it from totally pure motives.

Then I realised they would give me a Bronze Star for it and I said I

had mixed feelings, because I may have gotten this medal

because I did something that ended up killing a guy.

A few months later, Karl would earn another medal,

the second-highest a Marine can receive, the Navy Cross.

But in this case, Achilles would become Socrates.

Again, his unit was on the assault, but they were pinned down.

Karl ran out all by himself to clear the enemy bunkers, but suddenly he

realised he was no longer alone.

Off to the side came one of his men.

I looked behind him and all the marines were coming up behind me.

The whole line.

I mean, to this day I get emotional about it, because to see all these

kids just coming up that hill.

We hit the line of bunkers and we took the hill.

The massive difference between getting the Navy Cross

and that Bronze Star is that I was just trying to get us out

of a pickle, I was trying to figure out how to save people.

It's your motivations that are what's

really important about heroism.

More than the deed itself.

In October, I travelled to Boston, and this happened

in the city's main park.

It was a gathering of over half the living congressional medal

of honour recipients.

There are only 78.

It is the military's highest, most public award.

You know, I feel like I'm not a hero, you know, I didn't do anything

more

heroic than 52 other guys who were with me that day on the battlefield.

The eight guys who never made it home, those guys were the heroes.

Clint received the medal for his actions when 400 Taliban fighters

attacked his outpost in 2009.

Never in a million years did I ever think I'd be wearing this little

blue ribbon of silk around my neck, it's the farthest from your mind.

So when it happens it's very you know, emotional, very, just,

a a lot of stuff happening at once.

It's kind of hard to process, as much as you'd like to travel all

over the US, talk to everybody, shake everyone's hand, you still

have a lot back on the home front you need to take care of.

The psychologist we met earlier says what's complex

about heroism is that it's an intensely private act, but it

also becomes intensely public, too.

They have to make a choice, literally, often go or no-go.

That's a very personal choice in that moment, they take the next

action they see is necessary.

Then people label them a hero and they say, I didn't do anything

heroic, I just did the next thing.

Medal of honour recipients don't have a choice if their actions are

known or not, but other veterans do.

The story of one begins with a Vietnam vet.

My name is Walter Robinson, I write for the Boston Globe,

where I've worked since 1972.

Because he's a veteran, he's kind of a go to guy when

a story involves military records.

In the fall 2014, a Marine veteran of Iraq was running

for Congress in Massachusetts.

Walter called a campaign consultant so he could take a look at Moulton's

military record.

The campaign huddled and said, is there anything

in it we should be worried about?

As we found out later, the consultant didn't know

what was in those records.

I got the record, which indicated that on two separate

occasions he had been decorated for some valiant action under fire

in combat, leading his men in Iraq.

It turned out no one in the public or

on the campaign staff knew about the awards, except for Moulton's

campaign manager, who was also a Marine.

At one point, not even his parents knew of the medal.

In a way, we caught him.

I mean, in an odd way.

Not taking credit for something that he damn well

deserved to take credit for.

It was very apparent from the beginning that he was

uncomfortable talking about it.

I'm curious if you remember the moment that you

found out you were going to be awarded the Bronze Star and how it

made you feel in the moment?

To be very honest, I don't remember it.

You know, it's not such a big deal in

the military, because we were just doing what we thought was right.

Do people call you a hero?

I mean, some people do, sometimes my colleagues in Congress

refer to me as a war hero, I don't think that's true.

I know they are doing it to be nice, but it honestly makes me feel

a bit uncomfortable.

Why do you think it's a bigger deal to civilians?

I think that they lot of Americans who don't have a real connection to

the troops are looking for something to grasp onto.

Something to celebrate.

Frankly, we don't need that as veterans, we don't need parades and

celebrations, we need people to give us an opportunity when we come home.

I think one of the problems with the wars we've been involved in

for the past decade or so is that all the sacrifice is borne

by the troops and their families.

If more Americans were involved, asked to participate in some way,

there probably wouldn't be this sense of guilt, where we always have

to be super conscious of protecting the troops and doing

what's right for the troops.

Not that doing what's right for the troops is wrong,

that's exactly what we should be doing, but there's almost a sense

of guilt that comes with it.

For many civilians.

I met a veteran who actually did have post-traumatic stress.

And he said, you know, I don't tell stories about Iraq

because the only stories people want to hear is about the worst thing

that ever happened to me.

There's this idea that some veterans have that they feel they can only

talk about the stories they think people want to hear,

stories that are really exciting, really violent, really funny.

But they are actually not the stories that mean the most to

the veterans themselves.

A few months ago I met with three veterans who are all writers,

they belong to a group called "Words After War".

Phil Klay even won the National Book Award last year for

his collection of short stories.

So they know a thing or two about narratives.

What is the story you think people want to hear,

civilians want to hear, coming out of veterans when they come home?

And what's the story you think they should hear?

It's interesting because it's changed over time.

So, early on, there was a particular sort of guy that I seemed to keep

meeting, who, when he found out I was in the Marine Corps would ask,

you ever shoot those big guns that could kill somebody from far away?

And would want the exciting, aggressive stories.

At a certain point I realised that kind of expectation had shifted

and what I tended to be getting in New York much more often was

people assuming I was broken.

I remember when I came back I definitely wanted to get

the assurance that what I did was masculine, so I would tell

the stories about being down range.

Now, stories that mean the most to me are the times where the sun is

just coming over Kandahar and I know the day is going to be crazy,

but there's that lull in the battle and I get that peace to myself.

The problem is that many veterans find it hard to share

these deeply personal stories.

Because so few back home have served.

We, as veterans, have a responsibility to meet

people halfway.

A small number of people have a big responsibility, it seems like.

Absolutely.

It greatly limits the direct connection that everyday

Americans have with these wars.

Not just, well, it's not my son or daughter any more.

It's not even the kid down the street any more.

You call that folding?

Where's that military precision?

You don't fold that many onesies in the Navy.

This is US sitcom Modern Family.

And this is Jay, who sometimes brings up the fact he's a Navy

veteran. I wasn't worried, I boxed in the Navy.

And that's it.

Jay in Modern Family is a prime example of a neutralised portrayal

of a veteran.

He is just the guy next door, who you happen to find out served

in the Navy.

You want to see more of that?

Yeah.

I mean, that's what we need to get away from broken hero.

Folks need to know that veterans are literally your neighbour.

Kate was a soldier in Iraq and now she's with an advocacy group

which pushes for more realistic portrayals of veterans.

Do you think Hollywood has a responsibility to do this could

Do you think Hollywood has a responsibility to do this?

I almost think that the media has a responsibility to

change the portrayal of veterans.

I worked at the Department of veterans affairs and there was

a point in time, 2012, every other week we were writing a story pushing

back on the narrative that veterans were ticking time bombs.

That all veterans suffer from PTSD.

TBI.

It really took hold in the media.

It has a huge impact on today's veterans.

While I was reporting this story, I was e-mailing with a friend

about the themes I was exploring.

And at one point she sent me this message,

it really kind of shocked me.

That's because I use the word civilian all the time, but I never

thought about it quite like this.

I remember when I first even became aware of that word.

It made me feel like this other, like I was on a different planet

and would never understand war.

And that's true.

But that idea of civilian life, a life form so separate

and ignorant and sheltered from the experience of war, I don't know,

it makes me feel really distant.

It makes me feel funny.

And it makes me feel guilty.

Our civilian friends may just not get what we did or why we did it.

That's OK.

Veterans can be frustrated with the lack of differentiation that

civilians make towards the veteran community, it's just

as easy for veterans to keep the civilian community at a distance.

What I do think, over time, it will be a problem in America

if fewer and fewer people serve.

And, therefore, a greater number of Americans have

no connection, real connection from emotional connection,

understanding, deep understanding.

If everybody's a hero, it trivialises something that

society really needs.

It's a really subjective thing and it's not a comfortable one.

I don't think there can be a clear, coherent answer.

I don't think there should be.

If we start losing our heroes, then we're really going to be lost

as a society.

Good

Good evening.

Good evening. Abigail

Good evening. Abigail is