Brass Knuckles

I have a six year old boy, and six year old boys ask tough questions.  Every time that he asks one of those questions, I remember my friend Jaime in El Paso, Texas who was 22 years old and had two boys. He was a carpenter, and I remember one hot summer afternoon helping him in his garage workshop.  His six year old came in and asked him one of those “daddy is it true that..,” questions, and Jaime put down his tools and took off his carpenter’s apron.  As he formulated his answer, I saw  a look of deep reflection cross his face.   Until I had my own sons, I had never really appreciated where he went for that one brief instant.  When he leaned over to his little boy and carefully explained his answer, his son’s face lit up and he smiled and knodded his head.  He got what he needed. 

I remember that Jaime smiled a little relieved smile, and wiped his brow with the back of his leather work glove.  “Bro”, he said to me, “you have no idea how tough that is to answer those questions.  I’m their dad; they believe anything I say 100%, because their dad said it.”   I’m sure I nodded knowingly or something, but I can look back now and realize that I really had no idea what he’d just done.  It’s impossible for me to have known.

The latest hard answer I had to give my son was during an episode of the Cartoon Network’s Star Wars, the Clone Wars.   The Clone Troopers, who have the bearing and professionalism of US Army paratroopers, were under heavy attack and fought hard, even though it was pretty clear that their situation was dire.

“Why don’t they just surrender?” my son asked.

“They just can’t do that, son,” I answered, “that would be the worst thing they could do.”

“Worse than dying?” he asked. In that moment, the universe stood still for me, and I had to think forward for a dozen years or so – would he also volunteer to serve his country? Could these words come back to haunt me?  What could be worse than a dead son?

“Worse than dying,” I answered him, and explained that there are worse things than dying, and sometimes you might have to pick how you’re going to die – do you fight or do you surrender and let them kill you?  My son took the answer in stride as the Clones were rescued.   I’m not given to crying – I’ve never cried in front of my wife or children, though more than once there has been occasion to do so.   But right now, thinking on what I had to deliver to my son, I’m very close.

I witnessed the attacks of 9/11 from across the street and was close enough to hear the impact of the jumpers as they hit the metal awning over the entrance to World Trade Center 1, the North Tower.  I’ve seen and heard them in my sleep, and I can only imagine what it must have been to hold hands with your love and leap out of the heat and thick acrid smoke, and through the window into the open air.   They had to make a choice; burn in place or jump out and into eternity.   I wonder, too about the parents of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, who took back the circumstances of his death from his captors.   Did his father ever have to explain that there are worse things than death to a young boy that would become that man, or was it a lesson that he learned through his life?

Fabrizio Quattrocchi stood up to them; it was to be sure a small gesture, but eternal.  An inevitability which he turned into destiny; not choosing the who, what, where or when of his death, but holding on to the one remaining variable and making the “how” his own.  Jame S. Robbins of the National Review of April 26, 2004.

Witness Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 36, a baker from Italy who went to Iraq to work as a security guard for a contracting firm. He and three other Italians were taken hostage by al-Katibat al-Khadra, the Green Battalion, who demanded that Italy release some of the Muslim extremists they are holding, and that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi apologize for statements he made that allegedly insulted Islam. They showed the hostages on video, and threatened to kill them if their demands were not met. To demonstrate they were serious, they took Quattrocchi to a field, and had him dig a large hole. They then put a hood over his head and forced him to kneel by the grave, preparing to murder him. But Fabrizio did not cooperate. He stood and tried to pull off the hood, shouting, “Now I’ll show you how an Italian dies!” ["Vi faccio vedere come muore un Italiano!"] The terrorists shot him in the back of the neck. Al Jazeera, which obtained the videotape of the killing, chose not to air it, saying it was “too gruesome.” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said, Fabrizio “died a hero.”

It’s difficult for me to put myself in his shoes; I can’t imagine being in the situation he was in, and nobody can ever know how they would react.  I would hope that I would like Mr. Quattrocchi, find meaning in my last moments for myself, my family and my loved ones.  For guys like me, Mr. Quattrocchi is a hero, and I am humbled by his example. 

I never linked to even one of the beheading videos, though I watched one too many.   The video I’m linking to is “safe”; the actual murder is not recorded on this clip.  I don’t know the circumstances of Mr. Stanczak’s capture, and he was certainly brave and collected as the tape rolled and he faced his captors.   Watch the video and the events leading up to the beheading of Piotr Stanczak;  listen to the heartless bastards basically essentially making him beg and leading him on to believe that maybe there was a chance that they’d let him live, then butcher him.  Ask yourself at the end of the tape if there is something worse than dying.     

The Polish government has announced that they will find those that murdered Mr. Stanczak and make them pay.   No price is too dear.

Remember Piotr Stanczak in your prayers.