Anyone for a hero?

My very able blog technical hero writes about heroes on 28 July posting. Sparked off by a programme about how well the London emergency services acted in the face of the latest attacks. I don’t meet/don’t know many 100% civilians but it was reading her entry that brought home to me just what professionalism and discipline mean. Whilst my experience of these qualities was predominantly in a military context, I worked alongside police and emergency services enough times to see how they performed under stress and I also had close contact with medical professionals.
My translation of professional is someone who is not content with just the basics of their job. A professional goes much deeper with the desire to be the very best at what he does. This attitude and knowledge gives them the attitude and ability to confront any problem that confronts them. “I’m better than this challenge”.
Again, in my alternative wikki, discipline means sticking to the task despite many good and valid reasons to give up. One has signed on to do something and has been well taught how to do it so that it becomes almost impossible to give up. One does not need to be an Old Soldier; even relatively inexperienced individuals can exceed everything one might expect from them. I only ever had good knowledge of one person who was decorated for gallantry. The citation was along the lines that despite working for long hours and in dangerous situations, he kept on doing his job time and time again. Even when he was very well aware of the risks, he faced them over a long period of time. That was someone whose professionalism supported him – along with family joke that his mother had not raised him just to die in Ireland and his discipline meant that he got on with the task and role he had signed up to.
As the average civilian has never been exposed to the training and situations that create discipline and professionalism, it is unfair to expect them to be much other than headless chickens in an emergency. Fire drill in IKEA, B & Q or some such does not equate.
None of my ramblings here should be interpreted as taking anything away from those people Gemmak commented upon. Rather, I aimed to show that, given the training and opportunity, almost any one of us could turn out to be a hero. Perhaps that is what differentiates one race from another?