Individual and Group Humility Can Still Work Today

“I often reckon with the very fact that I was such a small pebble in a large stream of thousands and thousands of men who went to fight this war.” James Martin Feezel 

Jim Feezel was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, who drove a tank that broke through one of the main Dachau concentration camp gates on April 29th, 1945. His action was one of the immeasurable acts that led to and made possible the freeing of 30,000 prisoners. 

This quote defines humility in a way not often observable today. 

Feezel reveals an understanding of himself and his place in the world as no less than or greater than the next person’s, but as one individual in a collective of individuals from all walks of life, political leanings and personal backgrounds, who had no problem working as a companion in attaining something so much larger than all of them. 

I believe this attitude, which to me conveys the idea that, although the soldiers were spread out in their platoons, most likely never to meet one another, they were convinced that each one of them was in it just the same. And that, all of them, though individually scattered across fields and forests, could, as one large force of unwavering integrity for the cause—each man in agreement on the big picture of what needs to happen—keep moving forward.

This attitude, so beautifully modeled, is what will still work today, given a chance. 

Jim Fezeel passed away on Thursday, October 15, 2020, at the age of 95. 

We thank you, James, for your service. Godspeed. 

Copyright Barb Harwood