Duty and Accident

"Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is very often the accident of glory." Teddy Roosevelt The Rough Riders.

The context was that some members of the 1st Volunteer Cavalry, nicknamed "the Rough Riders" by the press, had to stay behind in Tampa when the regiment deployed for the Spanish-American War. They very much wanted to go, and Roosevelt understood this automatically. It is very much a TR sentiment, as he was very conscious that his background and personality had sometimes given him outsize credit and importance in the war, and personally knew many people who he felt had never received adequate credit for their part.*  This didn't prevent him from lobbying for getting the Medal of Honor for his actions, which was a bit of an overshoot but not unfounded, according to later military historians. But that's who he was.

It is a fine sentiment, and worth remembering in all our doings. We have little control over who on this plane will be witness to our acts, but we are called to do them as well as we can anyway.

Humorous note:  I tried to dictate this into my phone after hearing it on a podcast while driving back roads. Teddy Roosevelt accidents of glory, and then when it looked terrible, adding of glory a second time.  When I got home it read "Roseville of Roseville accident Korman of"Not likely I would have been able to discern what that meant a week from now.

*We do have little control over such things. His friend Leonard Wood, the first commander of the regiment before being promoted up quickly because everyone kept getting malaria, received great credit which is now rather dubious, having a remote Missouri training facility named after him, now called "Fort Lost-In-The Woods."  Two of my sons were there for training at one time or another, and the name is apt, as I learned when I went to pick one of them up when he finished. I think it would be a hard place to be assigned to for three years running.