“A small band of critical men was once asked to accomplish a great but secret mission.” I just like how that sounds. Not quite like the first line in The Hobbit, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” It sounds more like the opening line in an anthology of secret missions from WWII. Maybe that’s why I like it so much? It hints of adventurous rescues and courage with disregard for personal safety for some great purpose. Like the Navy SEALs for example.
My wife’s uncle was a Navy Seal in the Vietnam era. I never knew him well, but he is really secretive and never stays in one place to this day. He could rebuild engines, fly those cool single-winged bush planes, and shot like Jason Bourne. Twenty years after the war was over he still had his Toyota Landcruiser in his shop, loaded with survival gear and firearms ready to drive up into the interior of Montana’s Cabinet Mountain range and disappear. I think his kind of service ruined him. Hero stuff always does.
The film industry skews the real truth by embellishment and superhuman portrayals of heroism because that sells DVDs at Blockbuster and Costco. But in the real theater of war everyone’s a hero. No one comes back normal. In fact, war forces all of us to redefine “normal” forever.