MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (Nov. 6, 2023) — I am a child of the Cold War. Both my parents were Air Force veterans. I was born on an Air Force base. Vietnam and the Draft were constant companions through my youth into my teens—even though the draft ended before I became eligible for it, I was among the first cohort of young men required to register for Selective Service when registration for a potential draft was resumed in 1980. I saw the immediate connection formed when strangers who served—no matter what branch, no matter what era, no matter what war (or lack thereof)—met.
Kenneth Branagh in a scene from his film version of Shakespeare’s Henry V (1989).
I longed for that camaraderie, too, but it was only late in my life when I had the honor of experiencing it as a member of the emergency medical services. I know what it is like to put one’s life at risk in the service of others. I know how sharing such risks ties those involved together. I know the pain of saying farewell to a colleague who has fallen in the line of duty. There is no evidence William Shakespeare had an analogous experience. Nevertheless, his Henry V—in the king’s leadership as well as in his relationships with the men in his command, such as the Earl of Westmoreland and the commoner Michael Williams—captures the essence of how shared hardship forges an unbreakable bond among those who risk their lives for a cause greater than themselves.
Arguably the best expression of this bond is given in Henry V’s Saint Crispin’s Day speech before the battle of Agincourt:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. (Shakespeare 4.3.62-69)
The camaraderie that Shakespeare wrote of at the end of the seventeenth century about a battle that took place early in the fifteenth century was widespread in the twentieth. For example, this is what Stephen Ambrose wrote of Easy Company of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, the company featured in the book and television series, Band of Brothers:
They thought the Army was boring, unfeeling, and chicken, and hated it. They found combat to be ugliness, destruction, and death, and hated it. Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands made on the body—anything, that is, except letting down their buddies.
They also found in combat the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They found selflessness. They found they could love the other guy in the foxhole more than themselves. They found that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them. (Ambrose 1992, 399)
—
With respect to the military, scholars who have studied why those in uniform fight have found a number of factors come into play: allegiance, pride, ideology, patriotism, limited options, self-preservation, and leadership. But one factor trumps all:
The strongest motivation for enduring combat, especially for US soldiers, is the bond formed among members of a squad or platoon. This cohesion is the single most important sustaining and motivating force for combat soldiers. Simply put, soldiers fight because of the other members of their small unit. Most soldiers value honor and reputation more than their lives because life among comrades whom a soldier has failed seems lonely and worthless. (Rielly 2000, 61)
Ernesto Martin, a soldier in the U.S. Army’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment in Iraq, is an example of that sentiment. Martin, an immigrant, had wanted to serve in the Army so much he learned English to be able to do so. But after a bloody tour in Iraq where the unit earned the distinction of being the hardest-hit unit in Operation Iraqi Freedom, he left the country a very different man from the one who went in. Whatever his interest in enlisting before Iraq, he stayed and fought for a much more basic reason once he arrived:
Now, [Martin] doesn’t even tell people he was in the army. If someone asks, he tells them to get a job in an office or in finance. If his family asks and really wants to know, he tries to explain. He tells them about his friends and why they were brave enough to keep going out even with all the horror they had seen. He tries to explain why it was so hard for him not to go back out in sector while his friends still did.
“I doubt it was about the mission,” he said. “It was about ourselves. We knew we had to go out there, but it was just about each other, making sure everyone could come back safe home.” (Kennedy 2010, 268)
This kind of camaraderie is not restricted to the military. What Gwynne Dyer in War says of soldiers applies to members of law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services: “The essence of the soldier’s trade is self-sacrifice—on behalf of one’s fellow soldiers, in practice, but in a more distant sense also on behalf of the community one serves” (Dyer 1985, 128). For those of us involved in public safety, the community we serve is not so distant. No matter whether our colleagues need our help or our community, we are willing to sacrifice—even sacrifice our own lives—for others.
—
Every day we step into an ambulance, or fire truck, or police car, we know there’s a chance we may not live to see the end of our shift. Yet we do it, day after day, out of a sense of duty. Every day, we think we could use more of us in the ranks—yet every day, we look forward to the challenge of fulfilling our mission. Before Agincourt, when Henry’s cousin, the Earl of Westmoreland, wishes for more men with which to face the French host, Henry firmly disagrees.
If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honor. God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more. … if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive. No, ’faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God’s peace, I would not lose so great an honor As one man more, methinks, would share from me, For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! (Shakespeare 4.3.23-36)
The ties that bind all of us involved in public safety were illustrated one night when I was on duty in Richmond. Our ambulance had been called out to a sober house where one of the residents was decidedly unsober. He was naked. He was raving. Whatever he was on, he was so agitated that he had destroyed the furniture in his room. Blood was splattered all over the walls of his room and the adjoining bathroom from him banging his head on the walls.
We were the fourth or fifth unit on scene: one or two Richmond police cars, a Richmond fire engine company, a Virginia State Police car, and our ambulance with a paramedic, a paramedic intern (me), and an emergency medical technician. Many of the firefighters were in the hallway outside the room—there was no need for any more people than necessary to get exposed to the blood. The paramedic, me, two Richmond police officers, the state cop who heard the call on the radio and came to help, and one firefighter were all in the room. One of the Richmond officers tried to talk to the patient. Our paramedic waited while several of us got enough control of the patient to get a shot at giving the man some night-night juice. I had a leg. The state cop had the other. The other Richmond police officer had one arm, and the firefighter had the other.
The night-night juice (haloperidol followed by lorazepam) didn’t knock the patient out, but the combination did calm him down enough to where he wasn’t fighting us or harming himself. (We still used physical restraints when we loaded him on the stretcher, though. The two of us in the back of the ambulance with him weren’t eager for a rematch should he get amped up before the hospital.) All of us—the police, the firefighters, the ambulance crew, and the patient—could have been hurt or worse. It was pretty tense before the drugs our paramedic gave dented the impact of the drugs the patient took. And there was shared relief, not a small amount of levity, and a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation for all who showed up, all who, as Henry V might have said, stepped up into the breach that night. Better than the laughs, we all got to go home that night.
After his victory at Agincourt, Henry V decides to engage in a bit of levity and finish a prank he started the night before the battle by starting an amusing row with a Welshman, Michael Williams, who had no idea he was arguing with the king. Williams was no fan of glory and honor—he was merely in France to fight alongside his friends. The prank nearly gets Williams in trouble with one of his officers, but Henry intervenes before any harm is done. Recognizing Williams’s fighting spirit, Henry and the officer who nearly gets punched by Williams reward Williams with money. But, and I think this is most important, Henry recognizes Williams as a member of the band of brothers he mentioned in his Saint Crispin’s Day speech.
—
For police, firefighters, and EMS workers, not all calls end in levity. Another night many of us stepped into the breach was the night tropical storm Michael came through the area. I was with my volunteer rescue squad, responding to calls in King and Queen and King William counties. Hundreds of first responders were on duty throughout the area. Our unit responded to a call in King William at the height of the storm. We were supposed to shelter, but we were already on the road responding when told to stand down—so we didn’t. We faced a long trek to a hospital in Hanover County, were forced to detour from what is usually the best route to a two-lane road with multiple obstacles: downed trees, debris, standing water. What is normally a thirty-minute trip took something like an hour and a half. As we neared the hospital, I happened to look out the window as we passed over an interstate highway. I saw the trailer of an 18-wheeler looking sideways on the interstate below.
Afterward, as we wheeled our patient into the hospital, we saw some Hanover County sheriff’s deputies looking shellshocked. One of our crew then found out a Hanover County firefighter had been killed and several others injured in an accident involving the tractor-trailer I had seen from the window. The firefighter who was killed—Lt. Brad Clark—yelled a warning that probably saved the lives of others in his engine company.
I felt Clark’s death deeply. I may not have known Brad Clark, but I knew his brother. I live in the county he served. I was on duty during that same storm, risking my own life like he had. And I saw the devastation on the survivors—firefighters and deputies who had been on the scene—at the hospital that night.
Brad Clark’s funeral was the first line of duty death funeral I attended. Clark’s memorial service was impressive. Responders from around the nation came to pay their respects to a fallen brother they never knew. Among those honoring Clark was the Fire Department of New York’s Emerald Society Pipes and Drums—the unit that had played at hundreds of funerals and memorials for fallen comrades in the year following 9/11. A friend of mine, Kerry Sheridan, wrote a book, Bagpipe Brothers, about the band and its year of mourning after the World Trade Center attacks. In the closing paragraph of her book, Sheridan describes the ties forged in trauma that forever bind those who shared the experience:
By being present throughout the mourning, the bagpipers had played a crucial role in the nation’s healing. Their duty had forced them to cling to the past while others moved forward. They’d talked of how it would never be over, but that autumn, the services did cease, and the bagpipers were thrown back to a reality in which they were once again relatively obscure and their ordeal was an outdated remnant of a terrible time that most yearned to erase. Over the past thirteen months, death had been a constant companion. They were lonely in its company, and alone again without it. But there were other companions. Each other. Old friends would stay, and new ones would come. Each moment of life would be differently cherished than before. The recollection would be shared in the lives they led, though spoken of less and less. In years to come, the pain would ebb, the memories smooth over. But they would never forget. (Sheridan 2004, 244)
I will never forget the night Brad Clark died. I feel a kinship with all those affected by accident that took his life—and with those who gathered for Clark’s final sendoff into the beyond. Similarly, I will never forget the bonds I now feel with the men and women of the Webster Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff’s Department, who supported and honored my family when my cousin, Trey Copeland, died in the line of duty—of a heart attack after a high-speed chase. I became a part of their family. They became a part of mine. I will never forget.
Nowadays, when I encounter law enforcement officers or firefighters or other EMS providers while doing my job, I recognize them as family too. I know they will risk their lives to save mine. I know I will risk my life to save theirs. While we may be separated by both geography and history, we are, much as Shakespeare wrote, a band of brothers and sisters.
Editors Note: This piece was originally written for an English literature class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and submitted on Nov. 6, 2023.
References
Ambrose, Stephen E. 1992. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. New York: Pocket Star Books.
Dyer, Gwynne. 1985. War. New York: Crown Publishers.
Kennedy, Kelly. 2010. They Fought for Each Other: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq. Nook ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Rielly, Robert J. 2000. “Confronting the Tiger: Small Unit Cohesion in Battle.” Military Review 80 (6): 61-65. https://armyuniversity.edu/cgsc/cgss/files/DCL_SmallUnitCohesion.pdf
Shakespeare, William. Ed. Barbara A Mowat and Paul Werstine, Henry V. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2023. Accessed 25 Oct. 2023. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/henry-v/
Sheridan, Kerry. 2004. Bagpipe Brothers: The FDNY Band’s True Story of Tragedy, Mourning, and Recovery. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
When suitably inspired I will write something, maybe about a breaking story in science, maybe about my career as a scientist (specifically, a biogeographer). I may wage war against the forces of ignorance from the dubious bully pulpit of this blog. Or I may just tell some war story from my past in which I should have ended up dead as a result of my own stupidity.
Henry V and the bonds of shared sacrifice
Posted by AbyssWriter on 11/06/23 • Categorized as Commentary,Film Criticism
MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (Nov. 6, 2023) — I am a child of the Cold War. Both my parents were Air Force veterans. I was born on an Air Force base. Vietnam and the Draft were constant companions through my youth into my teens—even though the draft ended before I became eligible for it, I was among the first cohort of young men required to register for Selective Service when registration for a potential draft was resumed in 1980. I saw the immediate connection formed when strangers who served—no matter what branch, no matter what era, no matter what war (or lack thereof)—met.
I longed for that camaraderie, too, but it was only late in my life when I had the honor of experiencing it as a member of the emergency medical services. I know what it is like to put one’s life at risk in the service of others. I know how sharing such risks ties those involved together. I know the pain of saying farewell to a colleague who has fallen in the line of duty. There is no evidence William Shakespeare had an analogous experience. Nevertheless, his Henry V—in the king’s leadership as well as in his relationships with the men in his command, such as the Earl of Westmoreland and the commoner Michael Williams—captures the essence of how shared hardship forges an unbreakable bond among those who risk their lives for a cause greater than themselves.
Arguably the best expression of this bond is given in Henry V’s Saint Crispin’s Day speech before the battle of Agincourt:
The camaraderie that Shakespeare wrote of at the end of the seventeenth century about a battle that took place early in the fifteenth century was widespread in the twentieth. For example, this is what Stephen Ambrose wrote of Easy Company of the 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, the company featured in the book and television series, Band of Brothers:
—
With respect to the military, scholars who have studied why those in uniform fight have found a number of factors come into play: allegiance, pride, ideology, patriotism, limited options, self-preservation, and leadership. But one factor trumps all:
Ernesto Martin, a soldier in the U.S. Army’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment in Iraq, is an example of that sentiment. Martin, an immigrant, had wanted to serve in the Army so much he learned English to be able to do so. But after a bloody tour in Iraq where the unit earned the distinction of being the hardest-hit unit in Operation Iraqi Freedom, he left the country a very different man from the one who went in. Whatever his interest in enlisting before Iraq, he stayed and fought for a much more basic reason once he arrived:
This kind of camaraderie is not restricted to the military. What Gwynne Dyer in War says of soldiers applies to members of law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services: “The essence of the soldier’s trade is self-sacrifice—on behalf of one’s fellow soldiers, in practice, but in a more distant sense also on behalf of the community one serves” (Dyer 1985, 128). For those of us involved in public safety, the community we serve is not so distant. No matter whether our colleagues need our help or our community, we are willing to sacrifice—even sacrifice our own lives—for others.
—
Every day we step into an ambulance, or fire truck, or police car, we know there’s a chance we may not live to see the end of our shift. Yet we do it, day after day, out of a sense of duty. Every day, we think we could use more of us in the ranks—yet every day, we look forward to the challenge of fulfilling our mission. Before Agincourt, when Henry’s cousin, the Earl of Westmoreland, wishes for more men with which to face the French host, Henry firmly disagrees.
The ties that bind all of us involved in public safety were illustrated one night when I was on duty in Richmond. Our ambulance had been called out to a sober house where one of the residents was decidedly unsober. He was naked. He was raving. Whatever he was on, he was so agitated that he had destroyed the furniture in his room. Blood was splattered all over the walls of his room and the adjoining bathroom from him banging his head on the walls.
We were the fourth or fifth unit on scene: one or two Richmond police cars, a Richmond fire engine company, a Virginia State Police car, and our ambulance with a paramedic, a paramedic intern (me), and an emergency medical technician. Many of the firefighters were in the hallway outside the room—there was no need for any more people than necessary to get exposed to the blood. The paramedic, me, two Richmond police officers, the state cop who heard the call on the radio and came to help, and one firefighter were all in the room. One of the Richmond officers tried to talk to the patient. Our paramedic waited while several of us got enough control of the patient to get a shot at giving the man some night-night juice. I had a leg. The state cop had the other. The other Richmond police officer had one arm, and the firefighter had the other.
The night-night juice (haloperidol followed by lorazepam) didn’t knock the patient out, but the combination did calm him down enough to where he wasn’t fighting us or harming himself. (We still used physical restraints when we loaded him on the stretcher, though. The two of us in the back of the ambulance with him weren’t eager for a rematch should he get amped up before the hospital.) All of us—the police, the firefighters, the ambulance crew, and the patient—could have been hurt or worse. It was pretty tense before the drugs our paramedic gave dented the impact of the drugs the patient took. And there was shared relief, not a small amount of levity, and a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation for all who showed up, all who, as Henry V might have said, stepped up into the breach that night. Better than the laughs, we all got to go home that night.
After his victory at Agincourt, Henry V decides to engage in a bit of levity and finish a prank he started the night before the battle by starting an amusing row with a Welshman, Michael Williams, who had no idea he was arguing with the king. Williams was no fan of glory and honor—he was merely in France to fight alongside his friends. The prank nearly gets Williams in trouble with one of his officers, but Henry intervenes before any harm is done. Recognizing Williams’s fighting spirit, Henry and the officer who nearly gets punched by Williams reward Williams with money. But, and I think this is most important, Henry recognizes Williams as a member of the band of brothers he mentioned in his Saint Crispin’s Day speech.
—
For police, firefighters, and EMS workers, not all calls end in levity. Another night many of us stepped into the breach was the night tropical storm Michael came through the area. I was with my volunteer rescue squad, responding to calls in King and Queen and King William counties. Hundreds of first responders were on duty throughout the area. Our unit responded to a call in King William at the height of the storm. We were supposed to shelter, but we were already on the road responding when told to stand down—so we didn’t. We faced a long trek to a hospital in Hanover County, were forced to detour from what is usually the best route to a two-lane road with multiple obstacles: downed trees, debris, standing water. What is normally a thirty-minute trip took something like an hour and a half. As we neared the hospital, I happened to look out the window as we passed over an interstate highway. I saw the trailer of an 18-wheeler looking sideways on the interstate below.
Afterward, as we wheeled our patient into the hospital, we saw some Hanover County sheriff’s deputies looking shellshocked. One of our crew then found out a Hanover County firefighter had been killed and several others injured in an accident involving the tractor-trailer I had seen from the window. The firefighter who was killed—Lt. Brad Clark—yelled a warning that probably saved the lives of others in his engine company.
I felt Clark’s death deeply. I may not have known Brad Clark, but I knew his brother. I live in the county he served. I was on duty during that same storm, risking my own life like he had. And I saw the devastation on the survivors—firefighters and deputies who had been on the scene—at the hospital that night.
Brad Clark’s funeral was the first line of duty death funeral I attended. Clark’s memorial service was impressive. Responders from around the nation came to pay their respects to a fallen brother they never knew. Among those honoring Clark was the Fire Department of New York’s Emerald Society Pipes and Drums—the unit that had played at hundreds of funerals and memorials for fallen comrades in the year following 9/11. A friend of mine, Kerry Sheridan, wrote a book, Bagpipe Brothers, about the band and its year of mourning after the World Trade Center attacks. In the closing paragraph of her book, Sheridan describes the ties forged in trauma that forever bind those who shared the experience:
I will never forget the night Brad Clark died. I feel a kinship with all those affected by accident that took his life—and with those who gathered for Clark’s final sendoff into the beyond. Similarly, I will never forget the bonds I now feel with the men and women of the Webster Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff’s Department, who supported and honored my family when my cousin, Trey Copeland, died in the line of duty—of a heart attack after a high-speed chase. I became a part of their family. They became a part of mine. I will never forget.
Nowadays, when I encounter law enforcement officers or firefighters or other EMS providers while doing my job, I recognize them as family too. I know they will risk their lives to save mine. I know I will risk my life to save theirs. While we may be separated by both geography and history, we are, much as Shakespeare wrote, a band of brothers and sisters.
Editors Note: This piece was originally written for an English literature class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and submitted on Nov. 6, 2023.
References
Ambrose, Stephen E. 1992. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. New York: Pocket Star Books.
Dyer, Gwynne. 1985. War. New York: Crown Publishers.
Kennedy, Kelly. 2010. They Fought for Each Other: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq. Nook ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Rielly, Robert J. 2000. “Confronting the Tiger: Small Unit Cohesion in Battle.” Military Review 80 (6): 61-65. https://armyuniversity.edu/cgsc/cgss/files/DCL_SmallUnitCohesion.pdf
Shakespeare, William. Ed. Barbara A Mowat and Paul Werstine, Henry V. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2023. Accessed 25 Oct. 2023. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/henry-v/
Sheridan, Kerry. 2004. Bagpipe Brothers: The FDNY Band’s True Story of Tragedy, Mourning, and Recovery. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
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