
The Real Heroes Are Dead (2002) - jseliger
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/the-real-heroes-are-dead
======
bootload
_" The real heroes are dead"_

This is a quote attributed to Cyril Richard Rescorla. Rescorla was British and
originally trained as a Paratrooper in BA. He later found himself as a Platoon
leader in AirMobile Infantry [0] distinguishing himself in la Drang Valley
1965 in the first American encounter with NVA.

Hard-core as they come.

A measure of a persons character is how they conduct themselves under extreme
pressure. Rescorla would sing Welsh tunes to calm his troops in that desperate
battle reported by reporter Joe Gallaway. A book was co-written with the
Commander, Hall Moore and later turned into a film, _" Once we were Soldiers"_

It was reported Rescorla, a Security Officer for Morgan Stanley also present
in the '93 bombings (great side story, Rescorla infiltrated and identified a
radical Iman at a NY Mosque who was later charged) made his views clear that
MS should have moved out of the WTC.

    
    
        Rescorla was in his office on the 44th floor 
        at 8:48 a.m., when the first plane struck the
        neighboring tower. At 9:10 a.m., a plane hit 
        the second building where Morgan Stanley, 
        an international financial services firm, 
        had offices between the 43rd and 66th floors. 
        Survivors said Rescorla grabbed a bullhorn 
        and cleared out 3,800 workers from 20 floors. [0]
    

In being unsuccessful, Rescorla organised and drilled all MS employees every
three months in fire evac procedures. [1]

    
    
        "Rick could be heard saying "... be proud to be an 
         American ... everyone will be talking about you   
         tomorrow," and singing God Bless America and other
         patriotic and military songs over his bullhorn 
         to help evacuees stay calm as they left the tower." [2]
    

The title of the article comes from when Gallaway put the image of Rescorla
[3] on the front cover. Rescorla is reported to not have read the book, nor
wanted any recognition saying, _" The real heroes are dead"_.

[0]
[http://www.weweresoldiers.net/rick.htm](http://www.weweresoldiers.net/rick.htm)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla)

[2],[3]
[http://history.army.mil/news/2015/151100a_Rescorla.html](http://history.army.mil/news/2015/151100a_Rescorla.html)

~~~
wetmore
> great side story, Rescorla infiltrated and identified a radical Iman at a NY
> Mosque who was later charged

Not quite, it was his friend Daniel Hall.

~~~
bootload
Was it? yep, misread that one. Thx for the correction.

------
andrewclunn
Ironically, this doesn't make me want to be a hero. Instead it makes me see
the thanklessness of duty. Society loves a dead hero because they can be used
without asking for anything.

~~~
zeveb
The hero chooses to do his duty even though he knows he won't be thanked, even
though he knows he will die.

I don't know if I'd be a hero, but I hope I would.

~~~
andrewclunn
For my family? For those I love and those who I really care about? No
question. But for some abstract like society, as part of a job for a paycheck,
or out of some internalized sense of duty? No.

~~~
pjc50
"A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty
distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him."

\- Napoleon Bonaparte, as quoted in Civ 4

------
guard-of-terra
"He’d fought against Communist-backed insurgencies in Cyprus from 1957 to
1960, and in Rhodesia from 1960 to 1963."

Are there any reasons to think Communist influence was deciding in either
case?

UPD: After reading Wikipedia, to me it seems to be the case of "Let's call our
opponents communist, make Captain America do whatever pleases us".

------
orthogon
tl;dr 9/11

------
rodgerd
If you fought for Cecil Rhodes, you aren't a hero.

~~~
pjc50
I'm having trouble lining up the history dates exactly. It seems to have been
one of the forgotten conflicts of the retreat of the British Empire; Wikipedia
dates the "Bush War" to 64-79, slightly after the 63 that this guy is supposed
to have fought there.

White Supremacists vs. Communists. Not really something anyone involved should
be very proud of. But that appears to have been after Rick left. He would have
been in the British colonial police, which was a pretty ugly position to be in
but the British government was also attempting to ensure that Rhodesia did not
secede as an apartheit state.

~~~
crdb
As for how it got to promoting Mugabe into turning one of the most prosperous
nations in Africa into the new Weimar Germany, one interesting reading of the
situation:

The Rhodesian Selous Scouts (the new, mixed race, elite force responsible for
3/4 of the enemy casualties during the Bush Wars) made the decision to go
after the "moderate" party (ZAPU, led by Nkomo), weakening his troops shortly
before the final election (where all Rhodesian troops were called back to the
barracks and guarded by British troops).

They correctly expected Mugabe to win the election, since he could take over
the countryside with no opposition, and the plan was that he had such an awful
reputation that the British would not allow the election result to stand,
whereas they'd be fine with Nkomo. Unfortunately, they underestimated a. how
much the British were annoyed with Ian Smith and UDI and b. how little they
cared about Mugabe's true nature, and generally about the fate of the
"natives" in their own colonies, just wanting to wrap up the whole thing as
quickly as possible and stop being the centre of global attention.

In fact you can trace Mugabe's rise to the assassination of the moderate,
educated, highly competent leader of ZAPU and later ZANU, Herbert Chitepo, a
national hero and the country's first black lawyer, by a former British SAS
soldier working half on contract, half out of ideology for the Rhodesians. The
assassination, which was followed by Rhodesian disinformation to make it look
like it was a faction war, was supposed to seed dissent within the enemy camp.
Instead, Mugabe took advantage of the chaos to emerge as the leader and the
rest is history. For all we know, Chitepo could have been the African Lee Kuan
Yew.

The rise and fall of Rhodesia is one of the most fascinating parts of 20th
century history and I really recommend getting acquainted with the period. If
anybody has ZANU/ZAPU/ZANLA-side sources, I'd love to read them as I could
find very little on the subject and much I heard from that point of view was
from Zimbabweans whose family members were fighting on that side of the
conflict.

~~~
bootload
Dan Tharp on SOFREP writes a lot on the history of the Rhodesian conflict and
SF units during the Bush War.

[https://sofrep.com/author/dantharp/](https://sofrep.com/author/dantharp/)

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D0K3G30/ref=cm_sw_su_dp](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D0K3G30/ref=cm_sw_su_dp)

------
johnfjacobi
I think this article could have been a lot better / more touching had they
chosen people who were more relatable. Both Susan and Rick pretty much
embodied the stereotype of the people close to the towers --- rich and
privileged, aloof and out of touch to the Everyman's concerns, etc.

Of course, that doesn't change the message of the story, but it does affect
how powerfully it will be heard.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
I think this comment could have been a lot better / less embarrassing had you
chosen to read the article. A couple in their early sixties who live somewhere
in New Jersey in a house that they didn't even own outright is not wealthy. A
month after he died, she had trouble paying the mortgage on the house. That
isn't very privileged.

She had a job as an administrator at a college which she took to support her
children after her marriage didn't work out and she found herself without many
job skills. He had a job that he'd like to retire from at the age of 62 but an
inadequate retirement fund. You almost literally could not invent a more
"everyman" couple in their early sixties.

~~~
johnfjacobi
I _did_ read the article, and I would remind you:

> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even
> read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article
> mentions that."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Let me be clear: I'm not just talking about money here. Rick clearly had money
for the vast majority of his life. But even Susan was described as being part
of a high _socio_ -economic class:

> It was obvious to Hill that Susan was from a higher social class, which made
> him a little self-conscious.

You may have gotten a different impression, but it's not like mine came out of
the blue. The article paints them as pretty well off, especially eventually.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Fair enough and apologies for saying that I didn't think you read it - I
wasn't trolling, I was genuinely surprised by that reading.

I don't think it is clear that Rick had money for the majority of his life, he
looks like someone who grew up in modest circumstances (his mother was
housekeeper!), enlisted at the age of 16, ended up eventually joining the US
army, was eventually selected for OCS, and then used military benefits to go
the University of Oklahoma to study literature and law. He taught for a while,
then moved to do corporate security in his 40s.

That sounds to me like a relatively clever working class boy who eventually
worked his way up to a pretty good professional job.

Susan is obviously from a higher social class - note in the article, the
contrast is between Rick's friend and her, not between Rick and his friend -
but by the time of the article she is essentially working a non-career track
pink collar job. That's not unusual for an upper middle class divorced woman
of her generation of course but it's a big economic step down from her
previous life.

