What makes a hero
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
News stories and editorials have praised the late Frank Hart, founder of Wildlife Safari in Winston, Ore., but none have told about the Frank Hart that I knew. This story perhaps is more revealing of the character of the man than all the praise for his genius at building Wildlife Safari into a major tourist attraction, despite all the naysayers who predicted it would fail.
I know this story because Frank was a student in my writing classes where he wrote his memoirs. Let me start with the words on a yellowing piece of paper framed and kept in his home. It, I believe, defines him best:
"On 15 April 1945, when his platoon became separated from their company during a bitter enemy counter-attack, Lt. Hart, despite heavy artillery, mortar and small arms barrage, courageously led his men across perilous terrain in a determined assault and, with accurate fire, he destroyed several half-tracks, inflicted severe casualties upon the hostile forces and captured numerous prisoners. Lt. Hart’s gallant actions and outstanding leadership contributed immeasurably to his unit’s seizure of an important objective."
Those words are on the citation Hart received as a 21-year-old second lieutenant in Company G, 2nd Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. That action took place near Terfhaus, Germany for which Hart was awarded the Silver Star, the second highest award for gallantry. Only the Congressional Medal of Honor is higher.
At the time he was awarded the medal, Hart’s unit had already been chosen to guard Nazi prisoners awaiting trial for war crimes at Nuremberg. On the day of the awards ceremony, which took place in the Nuremberg Palace courtyard, the trial was suspended. The defendants, including Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels, were commanded to witness the ceremony as nine American soldiers received medals. Even that yellowing paper didn’t tell whole story.
Hart received a deep shrapnel wound in the chest from a jagged piece of shell fragment, shrapnel wounds his leg and a ruptured left eardrum. "I don’t really think of it as an act of heroism," Hart said in his memoir. "As far as I am concerned we were just caught in a fire fight. The men needed a leader and it fell to me to supply that leadership. It wasn’t a case of being better than another, it was just a moment in time when that happened."
He even expressed the feeling that there were far more heroic men than himself in the war who didn’t get medals for what they did. "Medals require witnesses and not all the heroic actions were done before witnesses and often, if there were witnesses, they died in the action." A diary he kept has these lines: "The simple unsung heroism of the soldiers who did their jobs without shirking kept building in my mind. Complain and gripe, yes, but they were the glue that made the whole complex plan possible." He said the secret weapon Americans had was "the relatively undisciplined American GI who never really expected his problems to be solved by the brass. He had an inner resourcefulness that he never relinquished."
The fighting ended for Hart in a small Czechoslovakian mountain village named Luby u Chebu which his company had liberated. Hart’s diary tells about it: "On May 7 we slept on in a violin factory, a nice change from fox holes. My platoon had orders to attack the hills east of the village the next morning, but just before 6 a.m. a message came for me to see the company commander before moving my troops. He told me the war was over." That was May 8, 1945.
Hart returned to that village on the 50th anniversary of V-E Day and found the violin factory where he had spent his last night of the war. The violin maker presented him with a violin, an instrument Frank learned to play at age 71. Like real heros, you probably would have never heard Frank tell this side of his life.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)