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London Letter: Heroes are born, not made

In this day and age, most of us never face a truly dangerous situation

WHEN I reported on the Durban townships uprisings in the 1980s, I was occasionally in vaguely hairy situations, but there were always police nearby. And even if they hated the English press, to their credit, the cops would always come to the rescue.

But what’s it like to be in a real life and death situation? And more importantly, would we be brave or simply curl into a ball and yell for mommy?

We’d all like to think we would act like heroes, but it doesn’t always happen that way.

A study of the Asiana Flight 214 plane crash in San Francisco three months ago showed the wild variations of passenger behaviour.

Some men ran over prostrate women and children in their haste to escape. Others become absolutely calm, as if transported to what one called ‘bullet time’ and began helping others before themselves.

The same thing happened during the Colorado shootings by crazed ‘Batman’ killer James Holmes at the screening of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.

Three men were killed shielding their womenfolk while other husbands ran like rats.

This inevitably raises the question: Are heroes born or made?

A leading Yale University psychiatrist, Professor Deane Aikins, says it’s the former. He found that while everyone is flooded with stress hormones during extreme danger, some show signs of producing counter-hormones that actually calm them down. He said that in brave people the peptides that reduce panic are much higher than in most people.

This doesn’t clarify why many people still show incredible courage while scared shirtless, but it does tend to indicate that you either have it or you don’t.

But even so, how does that explain the life of an extraordinary man called Adrian Carton de Wiart?

De Wiart joined the British Army as a teenager, giving a false name and age, and was immediately sent to South Africa to fight in the Anglo-Boer War.

Within months, he was shot in the stomach and groin and invalided home.

Determination

Undeterred, he was sent back to the frontlines and in 1901 became an officer in the 4th Royal Dragoon Guards.

He then fought with the Camel Corps in British Somaliland, tackling an uprising by Mohammed bin Abdullah, dubbed the ‘Mad Mullah’.

During one attack on an enemy fort he was shot in the face and lost his left eye – forcing him to wear a black ‘pirate’ patch for the rest of his life. For this he was awarded the DSO.

During the First World War he was sent to the trenches to command infantry battalions. In 1915 he lost his left hand after being hit by shrapnel – but not before he tore off his own shattered fingers to continue fighting.

In the Battle of the Somme he was shot in the skull and was awarded the ultimate medal, the Victoria Cross.

Records describe how he displayed ‘dauntless courage’ in a ‘fire barrage of the most intense nature’. He was wounded eight times.

Still going strong when the Second World War broke out, at the age of 60 he led an operation to take the Norwegian city of Trondheim and halt the relentless German advance. This failed when supply lines collapsed and he was lucky to escape with his life.

In 1941, on his way to lead the British Military Mission in Yugoslavia, his plane crashed off the coast of Libya. He swam ashore but was captured and sent to a PoW camp in Italy.

He made five escape attempts, once being on the run for eight days despite the fact that he was somewhat conspicuous with his pirate’s eye-patch and unable to speak a word of Italian.

After his release, Winston Churchill sent him as his special representative to China. He retired in 1947 and died in 1963, aged 83.

In his autobiography he wrote, ‘Frankly, I enjoyed the war’. This was after losing a hand, an eye, and having more bullet holes than a slab of Swiss cheese.

In Carton de Wiart’s case, he was definitely born, not made.

At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
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