Word: heroism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...three frantic excursions by the rowboat, and the working of winches and propellors, the ship was made sung. Rolling like the master of an old sailing ship, in which school was trained, Commodore Irving came to rest in his cabin and lit one of nine pipes. Unaware of his heroism, the Commodore puffed vigorously and said: "I hope the tugboat strike will be over before the Queen Mary returns." And so he will go down in marine history as the first man to dock an Ocean liner without tags and in labor history as a most gallant scab...
...most World War novels, soldiers are shown caught in a vast impersonal military machine that operates blindly, automatically, uninfluenced by their individual actions. Simple privates or intellectual officers, they are alike in their helplessness and confusion: the machine of which they are part continues to operate regardless of their heroism or cowardice, their strength or weakness, their life or death...
...hero to emerge from the muckraking Department of Commerce investigation that followed was the ship's chief radio operator, pudgy George White ("Sparks") Rogers. Having stuck to his key until he was hauled out of the radio room half-suffocated, Sparks Rogers was decorated for his heroism by the Veteran Wireless Operators Association...
...person who still remembered Sparks Rogers' heroism was his good-natured new chief, Lieutenant Vincent Doyle, also a retired ship radio operator. The Doyles and Rogerses struck up a warm friendship. When Lieutenant Doyle's little daughter was taken ill, the lieutenant lunched every day with the Rogers family. Whenever Mrs. Rogers baked a cake, her husband took a piece to the Doyles. And it soon became clear that, if anything happened to Vincent Doyle, George Rogers would probably inherit his $3,200-a-year...
There are, however, a few notes of Irish heroism sounding above the clang of futility. The material speeches, rapidly assorting that war is terrible but not evil and that there is no redemption except by blood, have as hollow a ring as a master of irony could give them. They are heard only as they soop into a pub, where a bartender and a prostitute occasionally listen. But when the British soldiers complain of the sniping, the answer. "Do you want us to come out in our skins and throw stones?" is almost happy, pugnacious patriotism...