Duty, Honor, Country

By Bobby Halton

In May 1962, Army General Douglas MacArthur said, “Duty, Honor, Country. These three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.” It has been said that a vision is an acute sense of the possible. Firefighters and society in general have been handicapped by a culture that puts a premium on solving problems in the moment while ignoring the past and not considering the future. We can no longer accept this handicap.

Today there exists a lively and insightful debate in our industry regarding our mission and safety. The focus of this tactical debate is properly on what a firefighter does. And our risk management concerns are focused on what a firefighter does. But as the good general pointed out in 1962, more needs to be said about what a firefighter ought to be, what a firefighter can be, and what a firefighter will be. Not for any lack of interest or any innate flaw, it is clear that very often we firefighters lack a clear sense of ourselves as public servants with responsibilities and opportunities that are unique to us. Most firefighters miss that all-important step, that critical step, that step of developing a sense of how our growing confidence and competence relate to the essence of what a firefighter is meant to be.

What we all need, all of us, is a template, a guide, a vision of what being a public servant and particularly a firefighter today is about–and, most importantly, what we as firefighters may become in the future. Having a vision is critical to having a sense of what might be possible, of what might be attainable in the future by the noble individuals dedicated to this incredible industry we call the fire service.

I now represent the upper end of those of us still active in the fire service. Our vision of the firefighter was shaped when we were raised by legendary firefighters like John O’Hagan and Leo Stapleton. We all wore FDNY radio belts as officers, and as young chiefs we stood outside the fireground with clipboards and cigars. We rode the tailboards with open coats and scoffed when it was suggested that bunker pants would replace our much-loved, incredibly heavy, chafing and blister-causing three-quarter boots. We carried around, and quoted, our treasured dog-eared copies of Fireground Tactics by Emanuel Fried and Firefighting Principles and Practices by Bill Clark. The examples of these legendary firefighters became our visions and helped us have proud and honorable careers.

Our vision of what it meant to be a good firefighter was imprinted by the examples of these legendary firefighters. Their examples lifted us and helped us understand the significance of our duty. The example of these gentlemen’s lives gave us the inspiration to reach for excellence, to embrace a truly professional air, and enabled us to earn respect from others. In a word, they gave us style we could be proud to emulate.

Their example supported the great changes that were sweeping through the fire service during our careers, changes that were led by men like Coleman, Onieal, Brunacini, and Brennan. During those turbulent times, we were challenged philosophically and culturally. We grappled with ICS, customer service, certification, and accreditation. We looked to the past, examined our present, and embraced our future selves. Those legends whose honor and humility, whose courage and service keep us on our mission, their lives lifted us all, carried us, and made our profession the most admired in the world.

It can be argued that today our methods of bringing new firefighters into the fire service and of indoctrinating new officers in the fire service are lacking. The current systems are more Spartan in their nature, obsessed with what we do physically to solve problems in the moment. We need to blend in a little bit of Athens and combine what we mean and what we represent to society along with what we do. For what it means to be a firefighter more than our technical skills may be of far greater value now and in the days ahead to our communities, to our society.

Now more than ever before, it is critical for us to live up to the expectations established long ago of what it means to be a firefighter. In doing so, we are blending education and training, character and competence, with inspiration and aspiration. And in that blending, we create a vision of what firefighters are meant to be. You must be that vision of today’s officer, physically fit, carrying a thermal imaging camera and an officer’s tool, today’s young chief in a command location with a command tablet and chewing a protein bar. Today’s firefighter riding buckled up, wearing clean and proper fitting gear. Today’s firefighter carrying around dog-eared copies of Fire Engineering, the latest NIST/UL study, and quoting Madrzykowski and McCormack. A vision of today’s firefighter who lives by a simple honor code: “We will not lie, cheat, or steal nor tolerate among us those who do.”

Most of us train diligently; we train intensely for the purpose of becoming as proficient in our craft as is humanly possible. This focus solely on the task level creates a stagnation in our intellectual curiosity and begins an atrophy of our ability to remain excited about our incredible industry and its unique mission. But building a vision of our future selves is a powerful antidote to this stagnation and these unacceptable outcomes. By remaining curious about our history and those incredible stories of our principles and virtues in practice, we can learn and thereby model how a true national servant, a true firefighter, ought to be, can be, and will be.

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