The Myth of Invincibility

Combat soldiers are famous for and know about something called the "myth of invincibility". The first night I spent in Vietnam was interesting. I was assigned to an Aviation Maintenance Battalion in the resort town of Vung Tau. I had never been in a combat zone before. I was given short notice to appear at dinner at a local restaurant for the arriving and departing officers of the unit. I arrived, knew no one, and was introduced to a few people by my sponsor, a chaplain I was replacing. I did not meet the Commander. As dinner ended, he rose, thanked the men who were leaving for their service in a very short, almost abrupt "speech". As the meeting broke up (rather quickly, I thought - folks anxious to get out of each others' company) - he motioned to me to come. I did, introduced my self, shook hands as total strangers, and he said one sentence: "Glad to have you. There are only two kinds of people here, those who are afraid they are going to die, and those who are sure they are not. If you aren't in the latter group, get lost - you won't do me or anyone else any good".

The most abrupt intro I ever experienced, and I went to my room. My first thought was "damn Calvinists all over the place". I later learned that what I had heard was called "the myth of invincibility". Combat veterans will understand what I am talking about. Vung Tau was the safest place in Vietnam for Americans. But my real job was to provide religious services to scattered and isolated groups of US Army advisers attached to Vietnamese Province Chiefs, who could be reached only by air. The VC controlled all the countryside in those days (1965 - before US troops were committed). As I tried to get to sleep I pondered this piece of surprising advice.

After two or three weeks of flying to remote places to pray with and provide the Eucharist for five or six men at a time, realizing that if anything went wrong with the plane we (me and the pilot) were in deep trouble, I had to adjust to a risk-taking routine that was totally new to a preacher. And I had to do something to control my fears, as do all people in combat, whether they acknowledge it or not. And I discovered, Calvinist or not, that the myth of invincibility has its unique, though completely unreasonable, values.

I later learned that the commander to whom I had been so precipitously introduced had been evacuated from Iwo Jima at the age of sixteen with two Silver Stars and a Purple Heart on a Navy hospital ship when the doctors discovered he was only sixteen years old. He turned seventeen on the way back, and when he was discharged from the Marine Corps in San Diego, he went into town and enlisted in the Army. Finished the war, stayed in, went to Officer Candidate School, got an education at army expense, and became the Lt Col commanding the 765th Aviation Maint Bn, where we met. He was the right man to teach me what the myth of invincibility is all about.

It is the necessary but completely mythological notion that disaster will strike all around you and harm others, but you will survive. Obama will need it before Hillary completes her attempt to destroy him politically, without regard to effects on the Democratic Party. I am sure, when I look at his confidence in his message and what he is doing, that he is in fact the myth of invincibility.

Chuck Kriete