Today, celebrating legitimate heroism seems a bridge too far

Is it some D-list celebrity more famed for exposing far too much silicone-enhanced flesh than exhibiting even a modicum of intellect, or a footballer with an annual income amounting to millions of pounds, who spends an average fan’s annual income on a boozy night out with his team mates?

Or is today’s street ‘hero’, a notorious drug dealer whose activities warrant him a place on the Sunday Times Rich List rather than a woefully under-equipped soldier who dices with death every time he goes on foot patrol in Afghanistan, yet does his duty regardless?

September is a month to reflect on the qualities that make a hero and under what circumstances ordinary people summon up extraordinary courage to undertake exceptional acts. This year it marks the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War and 69 years since the RAF faced the might of the Luftwaffe in aerial conflict that truly was the Battle of Britain.

Last weekend, veterans, serving paratroopers and the Dutch people commemorated the 65th anniversary of Operation Market Garden: the doomed Allied attempt to shorten the war by taking the crucial network of bridges in southern Holland. Although an acknowledged military disaster, it is nonetheless renowned for the bravery of not just airborne troops from Britain, Poland and America but also the Dutch people who suffered terribly in the aftermath as the Germans inflicted a cruel retribution that saw a cold winter made worse by severe food and fuel

shortages.

Above all, the ceremonies held in Arnhem honoured the brave ‘paras’ who defiantly held on to the bridge and other footholds in the town until they were overwhelmed, surrendered or managed to escape to fight again.

All those battles – and many more – made warriors and heroes out of men and women who in peacetime were no different from you or I. Until political events beyond their control intervened, they went about their daily and probably quite dull existences without ever standing out from the crowd.

There are those in our own small community who in their youth fought in bloody battles. There are others who lived through six years of enemy occupation yet summoned the fortitude to overcome the depravations and affronts to their personal liberties.

Today, the survivors and veterans are old, worn down by life and many suffer ill health. Excepting the special days when we remember their feats and they go on parade, adorned with medals, to stand proud before memorials or shed tears for long-dead comrades in war cemeteries, there is no way of knowing that they were once tested in battle.

This September has thrust Jersey back on the world stage because of the activity of a criminal who in the eyes of some is a hero – the alleged mastermind of a £1 million plot to import drugs into the Island, Liverpudlian Curtis Warren.

It is a sorry state of affairs that more members of the international press pack are covering the trial of Mr Warren and his co-accused before the Royal Court than travelled to the Netherlands for the commemoration of Market Garden.

This is indicative of a society in which an unenlightened popular culture places notoriety above decency and sees books, such as the one written about Warren, outselling those worthy historical tomes that tell the stories of the battles and the ordinary people who were willing to put their lives on the line to make a better world.

That Warren is the subject of a best-selling book and the impressionable think it is cool to wear T-shirts bearing his image shows that to a small number of individuals he is a hero. I wonder what the teenage pilots who were consumed by fire in the cockpits of Spitfires or the paratroopers who died defending Arnhem Bridge would make of that?

There are those who revel in the notoriety of being on a ‘most wanted’ list and others whose sole purpose in life is courting the dubious fame of sleazy tabloid headlines and featuring in the picture spreads in glossy gossip magazines – no matter what the cost to their reputations or the shame it brings on their loved ones. We should pity them, revile them but never ever admire them.

Would those in our society who mock a sense of duty and sneer at patriotism and the prospect of doing an honest day’s work, have chosen a different route if they had been given the reputation of a hero to respect, honour and perpetuate?

The Dutch remember the brave men of Arnhem in particular among those who perished in the attempt to take the bridges across the Meuse, Waal and Rhine Rivers in September 1944 in a very special way.

Children of every generation over the past 65 years have been given the responsibility of tending a war grave and, at the annual commemoration, accompanying a veteran in the act of remembering the fallen. They also learn about the men who liberated their country and won freedom from oppression.

Although there are few veterans left now to tell those children what it was like in September 1944, those given the responsibility of keeping the memory alive do so in the main throughout their lives. This sense of duty for the fallen ensures that children and successive generations of adults always tend the graves in the war cemeteries with love and respect.

The sign at the entrance to the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Oosterbeek in Arnhem entreats visitors to ‘remember the brave men of Arnhem’ in the same way that immediately after the Second World War, the British public were asked to buy a survivor of Operation Market Garden a drink if they had the fortune to meet one.

As the death toll in Afghanistan rises, so does the nation’s consciousness of the duty we all owe to service personnel, past and present. The charity Help for Heroes and its Jersey ally Holiday for Heroes are doing sterling work alongside the stalwarts of the Royal British Legion. Yet of equal importance are the wars fought from within on the civilian front against criminal elements in society which threaten our way of life as much as international terrorism.

A society is a reflection of those it defines as heroes, so where does that place us?