by Gene De Lalla

Created on: April 30, 2008

The most impressive heroes are the quiet heroes.

During my blood donor days, I would hear and see ads advocating being a "quiet hero" - a blood donor, especially at those critical times of the year, mostly during the summer vacation months, when blood supplies were at their lowest.

I suppose that there was some vanity involved in my giving blood; always seeing if I would be able to break that 10-gallon mark, in other words, 80 donations.

Each time I donated, I knew that I would have to face that prick of the needle in my arm, yet that was nothing compared to those suffering from an accident or a hemophiliac on the verge of death from a lack of that special clotting factor found in "good" blood.

However, there are other "quiet heroes," especially those in the military, and, especially, during time of war.

Speaking for myself, I am referring to my time in Vietnam so many years ago. Nevertheless, in a strange way some of those crazy times seem like only yesterday.

One of those times occurred in April of 1968 when the dreadful news of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. reached the air base, located as it was, on the central coastal area of the Second Corps.

I asked a black friend of mine, Tom, from Houston, Texas, if he wouldn't mind if I accompanied him to the base chapel for a memorial service for the slain civil rights leader.

As we entered the chapel (used for the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish services), a sea of black faces greeted Tom and I - more me than Tom! - with the only other white faces being the Catholic priest, Protestant minister and the Rabbi.

I suddenly had this very sinking feeling that if Tom was not with me, there might have been a major problem with my presence. I "stuck it out" and remained for the entire service with my friend Tom.

Did THAT make me a hero? Of course not, but it was an illustration of just how much division still remained - even in the military - between our white and black brothers with the Civil Rights Act having become law just four short years earlier.

But the real heroes were those airmen, soldiers and Marines who put their lives on the line protecting the critical air bases from attack, with the air base supporting the embattled allies in the field with fighter bombers and gun ships.

My job was that of perimeter sentry protecting the air base from possible Viet Cong penetration, with the intent to destroy our aircraft and kill the Air Force Security Police.

There were many a night that I didn't want to be out there on a distant post with only my machine gun, surrounded by nothing but thick brush, mosquitoes, rats and the threat of being taken out of this world by a brutal enemy educated in the most horrendous forms of torture and death.

I couldn't leave my post. I had to stay put. If I didn't, not only would I have deserted my post, I would have let down my comrades with the possibility of causing their deaths and leaving that section of the base unsecured and open to enemy penetration.

I was scared. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. But I had to stay put, and I did. Did THAT make me a hero? No, I just did my job. And in the long run, being a hero - giving a positive example to others by fulfilling the duties assigned to you - is doing it the best you can.

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