by Brett McKay
Did you ever think why it is that so many of the great men of our country are found among those who began life in hardship and poverty? Many of them grew up in what was, when they were young, the western frontier, where they had to work hard; where they had no schools, and few comforts and conveniences. They have come from these circumstances that seemed so discouraging, and have become presidents, judges, generals, or millionaires.
One reason why so many that had such an unpromising beginning have won such success is that because they had so few helps, they were forced to help themselves. They thus became self-reliant. When they went out into the world they went straight ahead. Without waiting for any one to make a place for them, they made a place for themselves. Without waiting for any one to do for them, they did for themselves. Without waiting for people to advise them they trusted themselves. They were prompt, energetic and sensible. Thus people trusted them and honored them.
Though you have the helps that such men were forced to do without, yet you can cultivate the habit of self-reliance. You can solve your own problems, do your own tasks, and meet your own difficulties; and thus you, too, can be preparing to do your own part in the world.
“I was the first to step out freely along a hitherto untravelled route; I have not trod in the footsteps of others: he who relies on himself is the leader to guide the swarm.” —Horace
Our Job Was to Do Whatever We Could Do
FROM WE WHO ARE ALIVE AND REMAIN:
UNTOLD STORIES FROM THE BAND OF Brothers, 2009
By Marcus Brotherton
Historian Stephen Ambrose believed that a key to Allied success in World War II was the ability of American soldiers to think as individuals. While the Japanese and German soldiers were highly trained and zealously devoted, when their line of command broke down, the men were left not knowing how to proceed. The American soldiers, in contrast, were able to think creatively and take initiative in the absence of direct orders. This was exemplified on D-Day when Easy Company’s paratroopers were dropped far from their intended targets and scattered from each other. Instead of being paralyzed by indecision, the men banded together whomever they could find, and as individuals and little groups did whatever they could to further the mission as they tried to find their companies. Some, like Ed Pepping, never made it back to their men, but got to work in whatever situation they found themselves and in whatever capacity they could.
ED PEPPING
We were dropped much lower and faster than anticipated. On the way down I remember seeing burn holes in my parachute from the bullets going through. I came in backward and landed in the middle of a field. I didn’t have enough time to pull up on the risers and alleviate the shock of landing. The back of my helmet hit the back of my head. I didn’t know it at the time but I had cracked three vertebrate and received a concussion. All I knew was that I kept blacking out and coming to. That blacking in and out happened all the time I was there. I have a lot of blank spots in my memory of Normandy. I can remember only about half the time I was there. It comes in bits and pieces.
When I landed, I had nothing except a knife. As a medic I never carried a rifle anyway, but the speed of the jump and the opening shock had ripped all my medical equipment off me. That was very frustrating. It had taken weeks to pack the equipment, but the frustrating part was that I had nothing to work with. You can imagine, a lot of the wounds seen were catastrophic.
As medics, our job was to do whatever we could do. On the first day I was on the way to join the guys and was called into a building being used as an aid station. We had no evac at the time. A guy had a big sucking chest wound, a wound they had only told us about but never seen firsthand. The only thing I could do was close the wound up as best I could. I couldn’t stay there to see that he was evacuated. I don’t know if the man lived or not. That was the way it was. Time after time we saw guys lose legs and arms, chest wounds, guys all shot up and bloody. A man can bleed to death in a couple of minutes. If it hadn’t been for the wonderful doctors we had—the guys who had some serious medical experience—we would have lost so many more men.
You have to realize that a medic is no doctor. Our job was to reach a wounded man as quickly as possible out on the field, get him stabilized by bandaging and giving him morphine, then get him back to a doctor—if you could. But if you don’t have any bandages or morphine, what can you do? You scrounge around and find whatever you can. When you come across catastrophic wounds—what can a medic ever do about those? It’s not like I had a first-aid book with me or could call up a doctor on the phone.
That same day, the first day, I went to a church in Angoville au Plein that was being used as an aid station. One of our guys had found an abandoned German jeep somewhere and was bringing in as many casualties as he could. I helped him out for quite a while. The people in that church have never taken the blood stains off those pews. They contacted me a few years back to ask me if I wanted my name put on a memorial there. I said, “Heck no. All I did was bring people in.”
Outside Beaumont, there was a lot of fire going on. Lieutenant Colonel Billy Turner, 1st Battalion’s commanding officer, stood on top of a tank turret and directed fire at a .75. He was hit in the head by a sniper’s bullet and collapsed. Since he was at the front of a six-tank column, the whole advance halted, exposing the column to enemy fire. I ran over and leaned headfirst into the tank’s turret where he had fallen. With the help of the tank’s crew I pulled the battalion commander out just before he died. It was an agonizing moment. Lieutenant Colonel Turner was a good man and much revered. At least the tank column could keep moving again.
I never did get back to my unit. The last thing I remember was being in Carentan with three others, walking headlong through town in an attempt to reach E Company. All I knew was that they were meeting fierce resistance and needed medics. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital with a cast on my leg from ankle to hip. I have no idea why. I have no recollection of how I got wounded. There was no record of anybody picking me up. One moment I was trying to get back to my unit. The next minute I was in the hospital cast.
In the hospital I got the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star for my action trying to save Lieutenant Colonel Turner (I never knew who recommended me for it), and the Croix de Guerre. Somebody stole my uniform, all my equipment, my medals, and everything I had.
They wouldn’t send me back to my unit because of my condition. They figured that because I was still in and out I either had a concussion or was a victim of combat fatigue. They ran me through all these tests. A doctor determined I had a severe concussion and had cracked three vertebrate in my neck. Those were causing the blackouts.
That was all I needed to know. Five of us decided to go AWOL, left the hospital, and went back to the 506th. I was with the unit for fifty-one days trying to get set up to go to Holland. It’s funny—for those fifty-one days I’m still counted AWOL, even though I was back with my unit. After that time they sent me to the general hospital in England to serve in the seriously wounded ward. I was still blacking out occasionally.
Working in the ward turned out to be one of my favorite experiences. Sometimes we worked two or three days straight on the guys, if a convoy came in, but it felt like we could actually do some good for the men. The doctors and nurses took me under their wing. I got so I could give penicillin shots without waking a guy up. That felt important. It was an honor to serve in that ward.
It’s true, we saw some horrific things in the ward. Some guys were in really bad shape. The Germans had a land mine called the castrator. It was a long bullet about eight inches long. They stuck it in the soil, and all that could be seen was the tip of the bullet. Guys stepped on it, and the blast went up the leg. One night we had thirty-four men wounded in this manner. Some lost legs, some had their lower legs shattered. You can imagine it.
I stayed with the general hospital in England until I was transferred to another general hospital, in France. There, I helped the chaplain. When I was a kid, I had foun
d out that I was immune to almost all the common diseases. So the chaplain had me go into the communicable-disease ward to talk to the guys.
After that I operated a switchboard for trunk lines throughout France. I don’t know how I got hooked up with that, but I took to it naturally.
Man Is Strong Only as He Is Strong From Within
FROM SELF-CONTROL, ITS KINGSHIP AND MAJESTY, 1905
By William George Jordan
Self-confidence without self-reliance, is as useless as a cooking recipe—without food. Self-confidence sees the possibilities of the individual; self-reliance realizes them.
The man who is self-reliant says ever: “No one can realize my possibilities for me, but me; no one can make me good or evil but myself.” He works out his own salvation—financially, socially, mentally, physically, and morally.
All the athletic exercises in the world are of no value to the individual unless he compel those bars and dumbbells to yield to him, in strength and muscle, the power for which he, himself, pays in time and effort. He can never develop his muscles by sending his valet to a gymnasium.
All that others can do for us is to give us opportunity. We must ever be prepared for the opportunity when it comes, and to go after it and find it when it does not come, or that opportunity is to us—nothing. Life is but a succession of opportunities. They are for good or evil—as we make them.
Many of the alchemists of old felt that they lacked but one element; if they could obtain that one, they believed they could transmute the baser metals into pure gold. It is so in character. There are individuals with rare mental gifts, and delicate spiritual discernment who fail utterly in life because they lack the one element—self-reliance. This would unite all their energies, and focus them into strength and power.
The man who is not self-reliant is weak, hesitating and doubting in all he does. He fears to take a decisive step, because he dreads failure, because he is waiting for someone to advise him or because he dare not act in accordance with his own best judgment. In his cowardice and his conceit he sees all his non-success due to others. He is “not appreciated,” “not recognized,” he is “kept down.” He feels that in some subtle way “society is conspiring against him.” He grows almost vain as he thinks that no one has had such poverty, such sorrow, such affliction, such failure as have come to him.
The man who is self-reliant seeks ever to discover and conquer the weakness within him that keeps him from the attainment of what he holds dearest; he seeks within himself the power to battle against all outside influences. He realizes that all the greatest men in history, in every phase of human effort, have been those who have had to fight against the odds of sickness, suffering, sorrow. To him, defeat is no more than passing through a tunnel is to a traveller—he knows he must emerge again into the sunlight.
The nation that is strongest is the one that is most self-reliant, the one that contains within its boundaries all that its people need. If, with its ports all blockaded it has not within itself the necessities of life and the elements of its continual progress then—it is weak, held by the enemy, and it is but a question of time till it must surrender. Its independence is in proportion to its self-reliance, to its power to sustain itself from within. What is true of nations is true of individuals. The history of nations is but the biography of individuals magnified, intensified, multiplied, and projected on the screen of the past. History is the biography of a nation; biography is the history of an individual. So it must be that the individual who is most strong in any trial, sorrow or need is he who can live from his inherent strength, who needs no scaffolding of commonplace sympathy to uphold him. He must ever be self-reliant.
The wealth and prosperity of ancient Rome, relying on her slaves to do the real work of the nation, proved the nation’s downfall. The constant dependence on the captives of war to do the thousand details of life for them, killed self-reliance in the nation and in the individual. Then, through weakened self-reliance and the increased opportunity for idle, luxurious ease that came with it, Rome, a nation of fighters, became a nation of men more effeminate than women. As we depend on others to do those things we should do ourselves, our self-reliance weakens and our powers and our control of them becomes continuously less.
Man to be great must be self-reliant. Though he may not be so in all things, he must be self-reliant in the one in which he would be great. This self-reliance is not the self-sufficiency of conceit. It is daring to stand alone. Be an oak, not a vine.
Be ready to give support, but do not crave it; do not be dependent on it. To develop your true self-reliance, you must see from the very beginning that life is a battle you must fight for yourself—you must be your own soldier. You cannot buy a substitute, you cannot win a reprieve, you can never be placed on the retired list. The retired list of life is—death. The world is busy with its own cares, sorrows and joys, and pays little heed to you. There is but one great password to success—self-reliance.
If you would learn to converse, put yourself into positions where you must speak. If you would conquer your morbidness, mingle with the bright people around you, no matter how difficult it may be. If you desire the power that someone else possesses, do not envy his strength, and dissipate your energy by weakly wishing his force were yours. Emulate the process by which it became his, depend on your self-reliance, pay the price for it, and equal power may be yours. The individual must look upon himself as an investment of untold possibilities if rightly developed—a mine whose resources can never be known but by going down into it and bringing out what is hidden.
Man can develop his self-reliance by seeking constantly to surpass himself. We try too much to surpass others. If we seek ever to surpass ourselves, we are moving on a uniform line of progress, that gives a harmonious unifying to our growth in all its parts. Daniel Morrell, at one time President of the Cambria Rail Works, that employed 7,000 men and made a rail famed throughout the world, was asked the secret of the great success of the works. “We have no secret,” he said, “but this—we always try to beat our last batch of rails.” Competition is good, but it has its danger side. There is a tendency to sacrifice real worth to mere appearance, to have seeming rather than reality. But the true competition is the competition of the individual with himself—his present seeking to excel his past. This means real growth from within. Self-reliance develops it, and it develops self-reliance. Let the individual feel thus as to his own progress and possibilities, and he can almost create his life as he will. Let him never fall down in despair at dangers and sorrows at a distance; they may be harmless, like Bunyan’s stone lions, when he nears them.
The man who is self-reliant does not live in the shadow of someone else’s greatness; he thinks for himself, depends on himself, and acts for himself. In throwing the individual thus back upon himself it is not shutting his eyes to the stimulus and light and new life that come with the warm pressure of the hand, the kindly word and sincere expressions of true friendship. But true friendship is rare; its great value is in a crisis—like a lifeboat. Many a boasted friend has proved a leaking, worthless “lifeboat” when the storm of adversity might make him useful. In these great crises of life, man is strong only as he is strong from within, and the more he depends on himself the stronger will he become, and the more able will he be to help others in the hour of their need. His very life will be a constant help and a strength to others, as he becomes to them a living lesson of the dignity of self-reliance.
Hercules and the Wagoner
AN AESOP’S FABLE
As a Wagoner drove his wagon through a miry lane, the wheels stuck fast in the clay, so that the horses could proceed no further. The man, without making the least effort to remedy the matter, fell upon his knees, and began to call upon Hercules to come and help him out of his trouble.
“Lazy fellow,” said Hercules, “lay your own shoulder to the wheel. Stir yourself, and do what you can. Then, if you want aid from me, you shall have it.”
Heaven helps
those who help themselves.
“Do what thy manhood bids thee do
from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
who makes and keeps his self-made laws.”
—Richard Francis Burton
Whoso Would Be a Man Must Be a Nonconformist
FROM THE ESSAY “SELF-RELIANCE,” IN ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES, 1841
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.