Heroes vs the Unfortunate.

OK, let me say this first. Black people can tell jokes that would get a white boy killed in a comedy club. It's their due. If my ass hadn't been in harms way I would not even dare to broach this subject, but it was, so I have license. But understand what I am saying before you go off the deep end. We have heroes, and we have the unfortunate. There IS a difference.
I really took notice of this trend during the Jessica Lynd debacle. The poor girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she suffered for it. She was unfortunate to be caught behind the lines with her supply train due to a navigation error. She IS fortunate, however, to have survived the attack, and then to have been rescued, although it has been suggested that by the time the rescue teams got to her, she was already basically out of harms way. The brave Native American woman with Jessica in the truck that day, however, was not fortunate. She died in the hail of bullets giving back as good as they were getting. THAT soldier was a hero. Audi Murphy was a hero, and fortunate to boot, having killed allot of Germans in fearless assaults on their positions and living to tell about it. The instances of extreme heroism are countless, of men leaping onto grenades to save the lives of their buddies, of men who held their posts against overwhelming odds knowing full well they were dead meat, of performing acts of selfless valor that went above and beyond merely trying to survive or increasing the body count. In this day of push button warfare, it's easy to kill people from a place of relative safety, but merely being a great warrior and doing your job does NOT make you a hero.
I was never a hero. I and my 80 odd shipmates, crammed together in a steel cylinder, went places we were not supposed to be, did things of questionable international legality, and stood a damn good chance of all dying together if our luck ran out. But we were warriors, doing what we were trained to do, and thankfully, we did it well. Unfortunately, two of our subs did not share in that luck, and the submarine service lost two boatloads of fine young men. As much as their Mothers, Fathers, sisters and brothers would like to think, they were not heroes in the strictest sense of the word, but we grieved, we hurt, and we honor their memories to this day. As we should honor the memories of ALL these fine men and women who go in harms way and pay the ultimate price.
So please, let's not cheapen the incredible bravery and selflessness that our true heroes have displayed in our conflicts, by calling every person who gets hurt, killed, wounded, whatever, a hero...........I'm sure if you heap them with such praise, you will only shame them, for they were just doing their jobs, and for that they deserve plenty enough honor. Just ask Jessica, she will tell you up front that she was no hero, but she knows who the heroes were that day, including the woman who helped save her life and gave hers. Jessica knows, and so should we.