Don Gomez (Iraq War veteran): "The peacetime Army I joined disappeared while I was in Airborne school at Fort Benning on Sept. 11, 2001. I was only a trainee, fresh out of basic training, but I saw it in the faces of the lifers; the Army just got real. ... [Civilians] are ready to applaud me for being so brave. I can see their enthusiasm wash from their face when I inform them that, no, I did not join knowing I would go to war. “Well, you’re a hero anyway ...,” they say. I don’t feel comfortable being called a hero. ... Words matter, and “hero” is so loaded and used so frequently that it stands to lose its meaning altogether. ... Soldiers are human beings. There are good ones and bad ones. A few do amazing, heroic things. The rest do their jobs – incredible, unique jobs – but jobs, nonetheless. Some perform happily, others grudgingly. And I argue that most feel embarrassed when lauded as heroes. ... Yes, people’s hearts are in the right place when they call us heroes. But I’d much rather a person struggle to understand what military service is all about, rather than just assume it’s all heroic, all the time." Amen.
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