In an age which confuses heroism with celebrity (actors and athletes are not heroes), and where the first definition in a recently published dictionary defined hero as a “submarine sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise,” it is refreshing to occasionally meet someone who actually has displayed heroism. I have noticed that true heroes tend to be modest men and are reticent to put themselves forward outside of a crisis. The event that occasioned their bravery in the first place involved risking life and limb for someone else.About twenty years ago I was in the home of a quiet and gracious couple in rural Alabama. It was a business call but the conversation eventually shifted to military history. The wife urged her husband to tell me what he did in World War II but all he would say was he fought in Europe. When the gentleman, whose name was Richard Comer, left the room for a minute his wife showed me a silver bowl than had been inscribed by his infantry company in appreciation for his leadership as their company commander. It was against the rules to give such a thing to an officer so they had taken up a collection and sent it to his wife in Alabama to purchase the bowl and have it inscribed on their behalf and presented to him when he returned after the war.The story he wouldn’t tell me was related by his wife. Captain Comer’s unit had been cut off in the Battle of the Ardennes, commonly called “The Bulge,” in December of 1944. A German attack force of a half million men unexpectedly struck a quiet sector of the American lines in a bid to break the Allied offensive and capture the Belgian ports. The weather was freezing and overcast, nullifying the Allied air superiority and enabling the German juggernaut to overrun dozens of American units, killing or capturing thousands.

Captain Comer kept his men together and avoided encirclement and capture. Holding a strategic position against attack, they captured a wounded German officer. The man was carrying a very important document which Captain Comer sent up the chain of command. The captured document detailed Operation GREIF, the secret German plan organized by the daring and dangerous Otto Skorzeny,  to infiltrate English-speaking German soldiers through American-held road junctions dressed in American uniforms to disrupt communications, change road signs, and even assassinate General Eisenhower. Over the next weeks, eighteen German soldiers in American uniforms and jeeps were caught and executed.  The operation was a failure.

When I got home, I ran to my bookshelf and, sure enough, on page 119 of Charles MacDonald’s A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge, was the account of Company Commander Richard Comer of Company L, Third Battalion, 424th Infantry, 106th Division, just as Mrs. Comer had related. I had met a quiet, modest, Alabama gentleman who led his men to safety, defended a crucial junction, captured a vital document which saved untold lives and perhaps prevented a tragedy that would have changed history.

I have thought about Mr. Comer over the years, having spent a little time with him on subsequent occasions  and realized he just did not like to brag on himself, perhaps knowing his wife was so proud of him she couldn’t help taking care of that. I’ve concluded that modesty doesn’t necessarily  mean not telling your story, but rather putting others first, doing your duty as best you know how, rising to the great challenges of life and realizing that it’s only by the Grace of God you succeed. Such was Mr. Comer, hero.

Bill Potter