"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" John 15
Why do men die for their friends? What is it about the community of a submarine that makes it so close? What is it about life in the forces that is so different from civilian life?
As I think of Lt Saunders' sacrifice for his shipmates, I remembered a passage from William Manchester's epic memoir of his time as a marine in the last war. Manchester in this passage has returned as an old man to Mount Suribashi where 7,500 marines had died and had climbed to the top. Standing there and looking down the grass covered hill he had an epiphany:
"And then, in one of those great thundering jolts in which a man's real motives are revealed to him in an electrifying vision, I understood at last, why I had jumped hospital 35 years ago and, in violation of orders, returned to the front line and almost certain death.
It was an act of love.
Those men on the line were my family and my home. They were closer to me than I can say, closer than my friends had been or ever would be. They had never let me down and I couldn't do it to them. I had to be with them, rather than let them die and me live with the knowledge that I might have survived them.
Men, I now knew, do not fight for flag or country, the the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for each other. Any man in combat who lacks comrades who will die for him, or whom he is willing to die for, is not a man at all. He is truly dammed."
As I read it, I thought of the drama of a fire in a submarine and the demands that the life places upon every member of the crew. This too was the moment of truth about a real community, when the Russians entered the reactor room. This is the type of act that represents everything that is noble about real community and it shouts out the lie that is corporate life or the buzz word "community' that governments use so often today.
My thoughts go out to his family.
