A local (Scranton, Pa.) World War II HERO, Gino Merli, passed away earlier this week. Article is from today's paper: Kelly: Hero's death puts mirror to ourselves 06/15/2002 The photographs lay side by side on the deck table, two 18-year-olds looking at life through eyes that couldn't have seen the world more differently. The one on the right poses next to the machine gun he used to kill at least 19 German soldiers in a field near Sars la Bruyere, Belgium, in September of 1944. The other leans against a beer keg in a field near Pittsburgh in the summer of 1987. It took a visit from the local police to get him to sign up for Selective Service, and his definition of "sucker" at the time was anyone who willingly went to war for a country that didn't give a damn if he lived or died. Patriotism was a joke to him. The one on the right will be buried this morning, 60 years to the day he was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Harry Truman. The other will sit in his deck chair trying to fathom the raw, immediate courage it took for Army Pvt. Gino Merli to make it through the nightmare that defined his generation. He was a hero at 18. I was a smart-ass who saw duty as making sure my underage friends and I didn't run out of the untruth serum that clouded the reality of what we really were -- devoted underachievers contributing precious little to any cause worth fighting for. Mr. Merli died at 78 on Tuesday, passing much as he lived the past 60 years -- quietly. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, two Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Battle of the Bulge Medal and the Humanitarian Award of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains, but he never fully embraced the celebrity that such honors afford. Instead, he accepted his fame as a matter of duty -- to put the lie to stories of the glories of war and to shine an inextinguishable light on what it means to live an honest, honorable life. He rarely talked about what he did in the darkness of the Belgian countryside on Sept. 4, 1944, which bears testament to the man's well-documented humility. As stories go, it's the stuff of legend. A machine gunner with the 1st Infantry Division, Pvt. Merli had already survived landing at Normandy and a pair of battle injuries. Now the Germans were advancing on gravely outnumbered, outgunned U.S. forces. A retreat began, but Pvt. Merli held his position and laid down cover fire. Under attack with his fellow soldiers dying all around him, he flung himself among the bodies and played possum. The German soldiers poked the bodies with bayonets, but Pvt. Merli didn't move a muscle -- until the Germans turned to chase the retreating Americans. When the Germans advanced, he sprang up and shot them. Wave after wave came and time after time, he played dead and made them dead when they tried to move on. When Allied troops found Pvt. Merli the next day, 52 Germans lay dead around him, 19 in front of his gun. He asked to visit a church, where he prayed for the men he killed and for a German soldier he had seen in silhouette throughout the night. "He was a reluctant warrior, full of modesty and humility," said NBC News anchor and author Tom Brokaw, who met with Mr. Merli often when writing the book "The Greatest Generation" and walked the beaches of Normandy with him in 1984. "The fact that he went to a church and prayed for men he had killed through the night was typical of him." Typical. What a strange sound the word makes when inserted in a sentence that describes such an extraordinary man. There was very little about Gino Merli one could comfortably call typical. Although he was reluctant to talk about his experiences in the war, Mr. Merli answered each piece of correspondence from his many admirers with a letter in which he wrote: "Throughout a lifetime we are faced with decisions that could take us either way. You probably have had many, and because we love ourselves and our fellow man, we do the right thing. We do not always receive a Medal of Honor, but we do get a medal of love, self-respect and an honorable life." In other words, playing possum is sometimes necessary, but don't make it a way of life. I did something last week that the 18-year-old I once was would've scoffed at. I bought an American flag. It will fly at half-staff today, and the smirking 18-year-old in the photograph will be put back on the shelf. In the years since the picture was taken, I like to think I've learned a thing or two about duty, honor and sacrifice, much of it from the stories of people like Gino Merli. In the process, I've come to believe that 99 percent of courage is fear. What you do with the remainder is the difference between being a hero and being dead, or worse, a living coward. There is an abundance of formerly smirking 18-year-olds here in the post-Sept. 11 world. Thank God the Gino Merlis came along before we did.
I understand Mr. Merli did what he had to do to under the auspices of "war", but I find it hard to honor someone simply for the act of killing a lot of people.
wow..is that really all you get out of that story??? taken out of context, i could understand your point...but in the context of Nazi Germany and WWII, I don't understand your point.
Perhaps if your father or grandfather were one of those retreating american soldiers, you would feel differently. How do you feel about all those American soldiers that were slaughtered on the beaches of Normandy helping to stop the Hitler? Was that a case of the Germans "simply" killing a lot of people?
Would you dance if I asked you to dance Would you run and never look back Would you cry if you saw me crying Would you save my soul tonight Would you tremble if I touched your lips Would you laugh oh please tell me this Now would you die for the one you love Hold me in your arms tonight I can be your hero baby I can kiss away the pain I will stand by you forever You can take my breath away Would you swear that you'll always be mine Would you lie would you run and hide Am I in too deep? Have I lost my mind? I don't care you're here tonight I can be your hero baby I can kiss away the pain I will stand by you forever You can take my breath away Ohhh I just wanna hold you, I just wanna hold you, oh yeah Am I in too deep? Have I lost my mind? I don't care you're here tonight I can be your hero baby I can kiss away the pain Oh yeah I will stand by you forever You can take my breath away I can be your hero I can kiss away the pain And I will stand by you forever You can take my breath away You can take my breath away I can be your hero
Interesting take, Jeff...it's amazing to me how two different people can look on something and come up with such different interpretations...I guess we all put the filtered glasses of our own past and perspective on when we approach anything. What he did here though, was much more than just try to survive...if he had wanted to just survive, he would have kept laying there like a possum...he chose not to...he chose to try to protect his friends. His character was tested here, and he rose to the situtation, in my view. I think the self-loathing is prevalent in the author's generation, particulary since 9/11...I've heard people of that generation say very similar things to this time and time again since then. I don't know if it's self-loathing or if it's simply an awakening...looking back at the past with a sense of regret...that's typical for anyone. As Cokie Roberts said not too long ago, "The 1960's died on September 11th." I don't think she meant the real positive things from the 60's, such as the civil rights movement. But the contempt for the United States from its own citizens certain suffered since then.
What he did here though, was much more than just try to survive...if he had wanted to just survive, he would have kept laying there like a possum...he chose not to...he chose to try to protect his friends. His character was tested here, and he rose to the situtation, in my view. I agree. The heroism is not so much that he did his job. It's that he put his own life on the line to save others when he did not have to. The heroic part was that he went above and beyond the call of duty and many Americans are probably alive only because of him.
What he did and his heroism, made it possible for people like Mrs JB and Jeff & the rest of us to discuss the merits of his actions. Imagine if Germany had won, we very well might not have the freedoms to discuss these topics today. I for one, think he deserved the medal of honor. War is hell, but it is a lot less hell if you win the darned thing. My grandfather, who was in the first wave on Omaha beach on D-Day and survived to tell me about it, said that his time in the war was the worst time of his life, but also the best time. He said it was a million dollar experience that he would not give a plug nickel to do again. We did not start the war, but we darn sure finished it. DaDakota
There is a lot of honor in war. War brings out basic human instinct. Kill or be killed. It is natural selection at its finest. Heroes like Merli should be honored, for they excelled in the most intense form of self discovery known to man.
Jeff, what he did is the issue. What exactly do you mean by "in the spotlight." You didn't really mean that the past isn't real, did you? That's exactly what Gino Merli did. This was supposed to be a thread to pay respect to a man who fought for his country. Honors were bestowed on him, which didn't mean much to him. He did what he had to do (as millions of soldiers did) to defeat Hitler and preserve freedom in the world. The past is real and should never be forgotten.
I don't know that I have a desire to be a soldier, but I can at least respect what they've done for us. Geez.
No one's stopping you from paying tribute to the "common man", in possibly another thread. Instead you and your wife come in here and try to diminish this man's life. Sorry, but I really don't understand it.
<b>Jeff</b> I know about the violence and death at Altamont compared to the happiness of Woodstock, but never thought of it as a tragedy on a national scale compared to the others you listed. Mango
I've been in this town so long, that back in the city, I've been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time. Fell in love years ago with an innocent girl from the Spanish and Indian home... ahem... What is heroism? Essentially, I think the crux of heroism is when an individual is able to do something that scares the hell out of him, or does something that he/she finds distasteful, morally reprehensable, in order to defend people or ideals that he/she believes in. I think, Jeff, that you are aproaching this from a modern worldview that is firmly grounded in the peace, prosparity, etc. of the last 50 years. You can't truly contimplate the fact that an enemy of the country could have both the will and the means to possibly destroy both the people you love, and the things you believe in. Do you think that these guys really enjoyed killing people? Do you think that this was what they wanted to do? In many instances, these people basically created so much traumatic stress for themselves that for years afterwards they spent every night crying themselves to sleep. This happened because of the conflict between competing beliefs between what they 'should' do and what they 'needed' to to in order to protect what they believed in. If someone was comming at Ms. JB to kill her, and you could stop it by killing them, would you do it? These people believed the threat to be no less tangable. As far as the common man goes, the Red Cross driver can come home @ night, look in the mirror, and have no problem in recognising the face of a 'good' person. The fireman @ who pulled people from the remains of the World Trade Center may have seen terrible things, but when he comes home, can look his wife in the eyes and explain to her how horrible it was. It seems to me that the surity of their actions makes these people's heroism a little bit easier. Sure they risked their lives, but, the soldier damaged himself irreprably in addition to his continued life. Their continued life was sort of a 'living hell' to some degree. As far as the 'glory' goes, I'm sure there were probably many other deserving heroes there. But, it's equaly clear that many of the 'public heros' are to a large degree, a publicity myth, created as an archatype to show the finer points of what we consider to be exceptional acts. Whether there are others who are more deserving is not the point, and I don't think that that really matters to you. I just think that you find someone who killed someone else being raised up as a hero to be a distasteful concept. Furthermore, your bourgois distaste at killing in general reminds me of the genteel revulsion that was generated in polite society in California in the 1800's when the fate of the Donner Party was disclosed. These people were so distant from the circumstances that lead to the canabilism, that they were sure that these people were bad, or evil. They were so sure that they were moraly above eating another person, that their actions were infathomable. Yet, these people didn't have to spend the entire winter on that pass. They had no idea what really happened, and they especially didn't have to live through it. The truth is that it's very easy to look down on the life of this man from the viewpoint of someone who never had to live in the environment that they were subjected to. Your distaste smacks to me of cognative laziness.
