He Is a Hero

A new television show on public television has captured my heart. It’s called “Home Fires.”

This television show is described as a period piece, which dramatizes how the women in Britain responded to the outbreak of World War II. The heartbreaking center of this, to me, captivating drama, depicts the women’s response not just to the war, but to the fact that their men - their husbands and sons – had to go fight that war.

As they send their men off to fight, their worry and sadness makes my own insides clinch.

I am the mother of two veterans, and a grandmother with only one grandson, who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan three times. I know the terror those women must have felt. I know how they feared the knock on the door, the ringing of the telephone, the delivery of the telegram.

I remember the fear the mothers and family members fought off when Operation Desert Storm began so many years ago. I remember holding in my arms the sobbing mother of one young man who was in the thick of it in Iraq.

We fought it off that paralyzing fear by starting a support group. That support group raised money, collected the name and address of every military person with county connections, and made sure that person had a message or package from our own home fires every week. They wrote back, and said it helped. Those efforts of support certainly helped us survive the fear of losing a loved one in war.

But now, we have lost one of our own. Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler died Oct. 22, wounded in a raid in Afghanistan. A career soldier, Sgt. Wheeler is from Roland and is a graduate of Muldrow High School.

Once again, insides clinch. My head hangs in sorrow. Tears well in the eyes. I know members of this man’s family.

“He ran toward the gunfire,” Ash Carter, Department of Defense secretary, told the media.

We always send our best, don’t we? My heart, our hearts, are heavy.

When I spoke with that family member, there was little I could say to ease that burden. I did the best I could. “He helped save 70 people,” was all I could muster.

“Yes,” that person said. “His four sons will always remember him as a hero.” Sgt. Wheeler has four sons and a baby, and he helped save 70 persons who were to be murdered. And he ran toward the gunfire.

He is a hero. He is one of our own.