Hawthorne: I wouldn’t have thought bravery would be a problem for you.
Charles Remington: Well, you hope each time it won’t be… But you never really know.

— The Ghost and the Darkness

There was a situation when I was stationed in Germany where wounded women, children, and old people from Sarajevo were evacuated to a military hospital.  Since the doctors didn’t speak Serbo-Croat and little children don’t tend to speak English, a group of linguists was sent to provide what help we could translating.  Some of the issues were pretty routine, including one poor woman who was in labor almost from the moment the plane touched down.  Some, however, were pretty bad.  This is when I saw something that I had never seen before and have only seen a few times since.  Some people who were normally squared away and brave fell apart, while a few people, who we had all rolled our eyes at when they got into the van for the trip north, were absolute wonders.

What I guess I’m trying to say is that you never can tell, especially when something new pops up.  One of the people who had a really hard time with that assignment was one of the few intel people I ever knew with a “V” device for valor on a Gulf War I decoration.  He stood up to being shot at, but the sight of suffering children threw him for a loop.  One of the ladies I considered a waste of a good uniform turned into a mama bear, worked unbelievably long hours in bad situations, and made a big difference to those kids and their families.