A soldier changes a tire for a stranger. It makes news. Why?
A local politician posted this photo on Facebook of a soldier in uniform changing an elderly man’s tire on the side of the road. The caption was proud and thankful but the comments started to become divisive.
The comments mostly fell into three camps. Those showing support for this man and his uniform, people sharing similar stories of soldiers helping them out of trouble, and those that believed it had nothing to do with his uniform.
“It’s not because he’s a soldier that he stopped to help, it’s because his parents raised him right.”
So did the other hundreds of people that drove by on their morning commute have poor moral upbringings? That this one-in-a-thousand man just happened to be a soldier?
I don’t say this to diminish the role his parents had in his upbringing, but no. It is because he is a proud soldier who maintains the military ethos and works in a place that reinforces this kind of behaviour.
His upbringing has a lot to do with it. The Canadian Armed Forces actively seeks men and women like him to join and serve. We are not a conscription force. We are not an option for criminals facing jail time. We are an all volunteer group who believe in service before self.
“If he hadn’t been in uniform this wouldn’t have become news.”
Probably not. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was this soldier.
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