William Ian Miller.
The Mystery of Courage.
Harvard University Press.
384 pages. $29.95
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When I was 14 years old, waiting in a long line to board a school bus in front of my junior high school in suburban Maryland, a bully began knocking down all of the boys who were waiting in the line behind me.
The bully in this case was named Daniel, and I remember he had coarse red hair and the beginnings of a mustache. It wasn’t that he was that much bigger or older than the rest of us, but he was stronger and, more important, tougher — and he knew it.
Adult men these days rarely have their physical courage put to the test unless they look for opportunities, but as a boy such challenges were (and I suspect still are) routine. If I had been at the rear of the line, one of the first he approached, I’d have been knocked down with the rest. But I had time to think about it. Would I stand up to him or not? I was one of the smallest boys in the ninth grade. I was no match for him. But pride and anger clearly warred with good sense. I didn’t think less of the boys being pushed down, but I was sure I didn’t want to be one of them.
When Daniel stepped in front of me, I slugged him in the mouth. I will always remember, with amazement, the sudden throb of pain in my fist and the spot of blood that formed on his lip as he reeled a step backward in shock. I remember being surprised at the hardness of his teeth and jaw. I had never hit anyone in the face before. What was I thinking?
Daniel lit into me furiously. I did nothing after that first blow except back away desperately, ducking and covering my head. He landed a fist solidly on my skull, which I hope hurt his knuckles, but in my panic I felt no pain. A teacher mercifully materialized and pulled us apart before he could do any serious damage. Minutes later, sitting alongside each other in the principal’s office, united now by a common enemy, Daniel urged me not to say that he had started it. I didn’t. I looked at the swelling around his lip and the lood on the tissue in his hand, and flexed my swollen and sore right hand tenderly and happily. It remains one of the proudest moments of my life. Daniel continued bullying his way through the ninth grade, but he never again bothered me
And I never again considered myself a coward. This was a big deal to me then, and remains important. It does not mean, of course, that I would be able to stand my ground in something like real combat, or even that I would rise to the occasion again if personally threatened. It hasn’t cured my fear of heights. There have been times in my life when I’ve responded with less backbone than the situation demanded. But that small act of courage as a boy still heartens me. Whatever my failings, I believe that when the moment of truth arrives, I am at least capable of rising to the occasion.
I suspect that most men have similar memories that they nurture to give them strength. Perhaps we just forget the times we shrank from a challenge and cling to the sparks of bravery. Maybe all men are capable of courage in defense of something. Some might hold dignity in higher regard than others, while others willing to endure embarrassment, personal ridicule, and abuse might fight furiously to defend someone they love. Extreme cowardice, I suspect, is as rare as fearlessness. That said, there is no doubt that some men are more naturally courageous than others.
The Mystery of Courage is William Ian Miller’s engaging discussion of this essential virtue. The book examines in a delightfully clear-headed way a basic quality we all think we understand and admire, and which most of us would like to believe we possess. Miller is a law professor at the University of Michigan and the author of The Anatomy of Disgust, which like this book is difficult to categorize. They might be called sociology, but will disappoint those looking for charts and data. They might also be classified psychology, but will frustrate those looking for experimental evidence and behavioral theory. Miller is, above all, a humanist, someone who can discuss abstract concepts with admirable wisdom, wit, and learning.
We don’t get far into Miller’s book on courage before realizing that what we normally mean by that word, what we all assume we know, varies so widely that even common definitions contradict. For instance, is it cowardly or courageous to stand alone against overwhelming social and peer pressure? Put that way, we would say courageous. The maxim is: Be true to yourself. People have it on posters hanging over their desks. But suppose the man standing alone is a soldier refusing to march with his platoon into combat. Here the refuser takes a lonesome personal stand, subjecting himself to abuse, scorn and even punishment. Yet he is, literally by definition, a coward.
Early in his book, Miller gives us the example of a "courageous coward," taken from Alex Bowlby’s Recollections of Rifleman Bowlby, a memoir of the British campaign in Italy in 1944. Bowlby recalls a disturbing coward named Coke:
a soldier with a perpetually sour expression, dedicated to "looking after Number One," insensitive to the claims of his comrades situated as miserably as himself. He was not well liked. He had to be bullied into action; he deserted more than once, though when caught the first time he actually looked shamefaced and remorsefully confessed himself a coward to his mates. But that was his last moral moment. Once he admitted his cowardice he became committed to it without shame. We see him next taunting the author for having stuck out in an action from which he (Coke) had absented himself. He flaunts his court martial "as if it were a decoration": "I’ll be here when you are pushing up daisies."
Like Bowlby, we find Coke despicable, but don’t we also feel a trace of respect for his defiance? As he is rolled away to be court martialed, Coke insults his comrades and predicts they’ll all be killed. "And we ’ope you’ll be f—ing shot!" one of the men replies. "I’ll be alive when you’re all f—ing dead," Coke hurls back. Bowlby writes, "Although none of us would ever have admitted it, I think we were all a little impressed. Coke had gone down with all guns firing." Coke is cowardly but, in his own way, fearless. So perhaps courage is not so basic after all.
What is the difference between moral courage and physical courage? Is it as courageous to submit and endure as to rebel? Does the value of courage differ from one culture to another? During World War II, for instance, the unquestionable heroism of Japanese soldiers was dismissed as suicidal fanaticism by American Marines, who have a fierce tradition of their own. Does the courage of a man brought up in a society where free will and individual choice are paramount outstrip the heroism of one raised in a culture that demands blind obedience to authority? In the former case, a soldier who performs heroically is often choosing to do more than what he is asked. The citation for bravery reads "above and beyond the call of duty." Japanese soldiers were expected to either triumph in battle or die. Failure was so shameful that suicide was an honored tradition. A brave soldier in this culture is simply going along, living up to what is expected, or, in another sense, giving in to social and peer pressure. On purely objective grounds, should it be valued as highly?
Miller recounts the story of Yokota Yutaka, a Japanese warrior who suffered the enduring embarrassment of repeatedly surviving his suicide missions. Yutaka was a volunteer Kaiten pilot. The Kaiten was a huge torpedo:
The warhead carried 3,000 pounds of explosives, powerful enough to sink an aircraft carrier if properly aimed. Everything was in the aiming, and to ensure that this was a smart torpedo, a human pilot was provided with room right behind the warhead. Behind his space was the missile’s propulsion system. If the Kaiten hit its target the pilot died one kind of death; if he missed — the Kaiten once discharged was not recoverable — he died another kind of death. The first way was glorious, the second a humiliation the price of which was variously starvation, suffocation, or, more properly, suicide by self-detonation.
Against all odds, every time Yutaka went through the stirring "ceremony of departure," where he and the others chosen were presented ritual short swords and saluted as great warriors, his torpedo was not used and he had to return. Through no fault of his own, Yukata was branded a coward, shunned and beaten by the other Kaiten pilots. When the war ends and Yukata is still alive, he is overcome with shame, first for not dying in the war, and second for lacking the will to kill himself honorably. We Westerners would see him as a man of extraordinary courage trapped in an unreasonable culture. Yukata saw himself simply as a coward.
In wars where men are exposed to months and even years of intense fighting, even the most physically courageous have their limits. It is as though courage is drawn on like a bank account. Aware of this, soldiers learn to hoard it, saving their bravery for only those moments that matter most. Veterans know that a comrade who stays to the rear, or hides when the shooting starts on one day, might be leading the charge on another. For those who behaved cowardly in one engagement and survived, there was always hope of redemption. You might lose your reputation for courage, but you could earn it back.
There was no such luxury for the men I wrote about in Black Hawk Down, which tells the story of a 15-hour firefight in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. For these men, many of whom had trained for years to prepare for combat, their actions on that one long day were permanently defining. Those who behaved bravely are forever brave, and those who trembled and cowered must live with that. It seems a particularly harsh standard.
If the broad scope of memoirs and battle accounts cited in The Mystery of Courage reveals one thing, it is unpredictability. Often the courageous play against type — the ones you would most expect to brave enemy fire are sometimes the first to cower, and the ones who seem most lacking are often those who most distinguish themselves. I am reminded of John Stebbins, a Ranger staff sergeant in Mogadishu who, deemed slightly softer than his hard-bodied comrades, was normally relegated to duties safely in the rear. Through an unlikely chain of circumstance, on October 3, 1993, Stebbins was inserted into the assault force and found himself thrust into the fiercest firefight in modern American history. Stebbins went berserk in battle, repeatedly exposing himself to enemy fire to defend his position until he was injured and literally pulled to safety. He was awarded the silver star.
Miller discusses the difference between rashness, which is how some more experienced soldiers saw Stebbins’ actions, and courage, but concludes that the two cannot be easily disconnected. Still, we rightly admire the deliberate act of courage more than the impulsive one. One of the most powerful series of photographs I have ever seen, on display at the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, shows two defiant young German idealists moments before their execution by Nazi soldiers. The magnificent poise of these two teenagers, barely more than boy and girl, who chose to fight evil against impossible odds at a time when they could not have hoped to prevail, literally takes away my breath. I cannot imagine such depths of moral and physical courage.
Another telling example of courage’s mystery and complexity is the story of Brad Thomas, a ranger who, having fought his way out of the chaos of Mogadishu to safety, was ordered to rearm and wade back into the fight. It is a truism of soldiering that anyone can be stirred, trained, pressured, or motivated to march into battle once; it is much harder to rouse those who have seen the terror, the randomness of death and injury, the noise, blood, and confusion. Thomas refused. In what must have been a deeply humiliating moment, he stood before his comrades and informed his sergeant that he could not return to the fight. Minutes later, however, Thomas wrestled his fears down and voluntarily boarded a Humvee to return to the embattled city.
I had been told this story while I was researching Black Hawk Down, and tried for many months without success to find and interview Thomas, in part about this episode. When I finally got the chance, I elicited his own account of his momentary loss of nerve, which verified what I had been told. It was clear that Thomas was still embarrassed by it.
"Why is it important for you to tell that part of the story?" he asked.
I told him it was important because it defined courage better than any of the dozens of other episodes of bravery told in the book. Stebbins had demonstrated one kind of courage — perhaps akin to lashing out at a bully. Overtaken with anger, he had blinded himself to the consequences and struck back hard. He richly deserved his medal. But what about the man who felt fear grip his knees, who was so paralyzed by it that he is willing to suffer the shame of admitting it to his fellows, and who then managed to wrestle himself back together, screw his courage back in place, and do his duty.
"The important thing, Brad, is that you went back out."
He reluctantly agreed to let me tell his story. Thomas went on to perform bravely. But even a man who cannot overcome his fear can come to be seen as brave. Miller opens his book with an account, from the Civil War memoir of Robert J. Burdette, who remembered a man he called "the good coward." This man comported himself in all respects as a good soldier. He willed himself to march into battle again and again, but every time he faced enemy fire his will collapsed and he ran. Still, he always returned, and always forced himself to confront his fears again.
With what beating of heart, and straining of nerves, shortness of breath, and strenuous calling of all reserves of resolution and will-power, God knew, and the colonel half-guessed. A braver man, up to that point than any of us . . . . The coward served through the war, and when the regiment marched home to welcome and honors, I think one of the bravest men with them was the coward. I know he was beaten in every fight he went into, but he went in. And he fought. And such fighting! Much we knew about it, we laughing, shouting, devil-may-care schoolboys playing with firearms!
What is a coward anyhow? Cravens, and dastards, and poltroons, we know at sight. But who are the cowards? And how do we distinguish them from the heroes? How does God tell?
For the most part we can tell. We know it when we see it.
In Courage, Miller returns again and again to the stories of soldiers, and he makes a strong and important case against further watering down what we mean by the word. Today, we are apt to apply it to anyone who successfully has a baby, completes a 12-step program, recovers from an injury or illness, faces down a phobia, or even endures a difficult contract negotiation. In the case of bearing children, a task for which all men must remain eternally indebted to women, the martial concept of courage demands a female equivalent.
Contemporary gender, sexual, and ethnic politics argues that all are entitled to their stories of courage, that no one is to be denied the virtue simply by having been relegated to powerlessness. It is even suggested that being invisible to or disfavored by the dominant ideology is itself a form of courage. As we see, this move is not so new; Nietzsche complained that Christianity used a similar strategy against warrior values. The politics of identity is thus participating in an ancient battle – whose beginnings are as old as, even older than, the Stoics — as to whether courage is best manifested in aggression or enduring aggression, in victory or defeat, in the charge or in stolid sufferance and endurance.
Many accomplishments require bravery and are admirable, but we go too far when we apply the label of courage to what is more appropriately described simply as hard work.
Adventurous young people now invent bizarre and frivolous ways of testing themselves in thrill-seeking sports and "Xtreme" competitions, demonstrating that in the absence of war the need to test one’s courage remains important, especially to young men. But none of us will ever know for sure whether we possess the kind of courage to perform well in battle unless and until we are put to the test, and it may be that none of us is or can be courageous all the time.
We are privileged to live in a time and place where tests of our physical courage are rare, and where we can practice moral courage without taking big risks. Miller reminds us that not so long ago, there was no difference between the two. In the not-too-distant past, taking an unpopular position very often meant severe physical punishment or execution. Today we can stand up for our principles in small ways every day without risking serious harm. And the good news is that moral courage proves to be more like a muscle than a bank account. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
