Picture of the day

Rod B said:
He must have had a huge pair of balls. Even though he was the enemy the bravery that he displayed must be admired.
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As often as not great skill and doable logic gets confused with bravery. Bravery is one of the most difficult to describe things I have ever seen. Often acts of desperation are considered by some to be acts of bravery when in reality the acts were done by people that either took a chance on doing something rather than just not reacting at all or kept their wits and assessed the situation at hand for weaknesses with the knowledge they had available to them.

One very good friend of mine summed it up very well. Everyone is brave in different ways. The men and women that suffer under onerous/violent conditions to keep their families safe in impossible situations are very brave people. Men and women in combat/violent/horrific situations need to be brave just to be there and do their jobs. We see such bravery everyday.

Every once in awhile we see separate acts of bravery that go above and beyond what is normally occurring everyday.

I will not even suggest the people we have been talking about here weren't brave. They either had certain gifts of perception or very well honed skill sets on how to perform under what most would consider to be extremely unnerving conditions. That means they went into those conditions with less emotional baggage and were more certain of their actions as well. This means they know they are fallible as well and that takes courage to face and set aside to perform appropriately. Then again, some folks just get off by pushing the limits on everything while they can.
 
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Royal air force SEPECAT Jaguar attack aircraft.
 
bearhunter said:
As often as not great skill and doable logic gets confused with bravery. Bravery is one of the most difficult to describe things I have ever seen. Often acts of desperation are considered by some to be acts of bravery when in reality the acts were done by people that either took a chance on doing something rather than just not reacting at all or kept their wits and assessed the situation at hand for weaknesses with the knowledge they had available to them.

One very good friend of mine summed it up very well. Everyone is brave in different ways. The men and women that suffer under onerous/violent conditions to keep their families safe in impossible situations are very brave people. Men and women in combat/violent/horrific situations need to be brave just to be there and do their jobs. We see such bravery everyday.

Every once in awhile we see separate acts of bravery that go above and beyond what is normally occurring everyday.

I will not even suggest the people we have been talking about here weren't brave. They either had certain gifts of perception or very well honed skill sets on how to perform under what most would consider to be extremely unnerving conditions. That means they went into those conditions with less emotional baggage and were more certain of their actions as well. This means they know they are fallible as well and that takes courage to face and set aside to perform appropriately. Then again, some folks just get off by pushing the limits on everything while they can.
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I agree bravery is a very difficult thing to define. In my mind bravery is putting yourself at risk for the benefit of others without expecting reward. So in my mind a pilot crash landing a damaged plane is not showing bravery, great skill and presence of mind yes, but not bravery were as a pilot staying with his plane so his crew can bail out is brave. These days we tend to use the term brave where it doesn't really apply. I guess that is partly because in today's world there is very little opportunity for bravery. In WW1 and WW2 there were many opportunities simply due the scale of things. Charles Upham, VC and Bar would only accept his first VC if his whole unit was acknowledged, he never thought he was doing any more than his job. This seems to be a common trait with such people.
 
Quite often people are singled out when in fact it was a group action that needed to be recognized. I saw a US Medal of Honour winner on TV recently and he couldn't understand why him and not someone else. Part of it might be 'survivor's guilt'.

Daily life offers many chances to be 'brave'. People that rush in to crash scenes to help survivors, speaking up when you see someone being bullied, simply doing 'the right thing' when others are not, etc., etc. It all takes guts.

Being brave sometimes means being sh!t scared and doing it anyway. How did Hemingway describe it? "Grace is courage under fire", or do I have that reversed?
 
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Revenge at Birkenau: Jewish dancer and actress shoots SS man Schillinger fatally and injures SS man Emmerich on 10/23/43 in the undressing room of crematorium II before she and her fellow women were to be gassed. She did a strip tease in front of the lecherous Schillinger in order to distract him and grab his gun. She shot both men after successfully grabbing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franceska_Mann
 
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If only more had. I remember a thread here a while ago mentioning a picture of one concentration camp guard, and how his rifle was on safe, and was probably not even chambered. Any one of the poor souls could have grabbed it with some help before it was able to be made to fire.

They were all so psychologically beaten, it didn't even cross their minds. One would have to have an intimate knowledge of firearms to pick it out, and form plan.
If only more did.
 
NAA said:
Think I might've seen a motivational poster with this pic that was captioned:

"You might be a bad ass but you'll never be a 'Jumped into Normandy on D-Day with warrior paint sporting a Mohawk' kind of bad ass".
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All before they were legally old enough to drink.

I now see grown men with full beards still floating around my city on skateboards.
 
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