Even our slow knew what they signed up for. And we all saw ourselves as expendables. So did nail's father.
Those fighter pilots were trips. The F-104 pilots never had to park their planes over a fuel pit. They didn't have single point fueling hose point. Just plain old gas nozzle from an F-6 fuel truck. Like a Piper Cub.
There's a difference between a person choosing to die for a cause ( i.e. to save the innocent) and sending in the peasantry to be slaughtered and stacked like cordwood for the good of an entirely different class of people.
Brave men and women, who are trained to do so, will willingly enter a burning building, without pause, to save the lives of the innocents inside. That's not the type of courage and Valor that I was referring to.
I was referring to the attitude of, when these selfless heroes sacrifice themselves, it's ok or somehow less tragic because they knew what they were signing up for.
Example...a Marine in WWII getting killed charging a machine gun in a bunker, in hopes that his fellow Marines will survive, is an example of Valor.
His country, sending him onto that field of battle without the tools required to survive such an encounter, when such an encounter was entirely predictable, is less ok.
A very specific example...sending men to Europe to fight German Tiger tanks in M4 Sherman tanks.
