COURAGE

Courage to the Infantry is not a single heroic act at a crucial moment in the unit’s life. That is for the movies and award narratives. Rather it is enduring the daily insults of life in a forbidding and unforgiving environment and the willing subordination of the each in favor of the whole. Family first. Me second.

Courage is best equated with endurance, perseverance and subjugation of the one for the betterment of the whole. It is the patience and confidence to follow someone into the unknown for either a nebulous or uncertain purpose because that is where the family unit is going.

Courage is knowing that where you are going, you may never return from but still going because that is what you must do. And you know both to be true.

Courage is doing exactly what is required and how it is required as training previously taught and the present demands. Courage is doing your job. Courage is an open appreciation of and a willingness to accept the consequences of your actions should bad luck and ill-fortune prevail.

Courage is the act of praying to see darkness during the light of day and praying again for the first morning beams of light during the shroud of night.

More than anything, Courage is the quality of rejecting the cold choices between personal desires and organizational needs. It is a fixed resolve to keep that choice during every moment of service. 

Quitting is easy. Enduring and performing is much harder and the true measure of the man. One moment’s performance is a potential within every man. Doing what needs to be done every day is a far better mark of the true level of courage that resides within.