What is a hero in the 21st century? We are usually used to dedicate this title to a person who stubbornly fights for civil rights, a perfect candidate for a Nobel prize. Or to a sportsman, who embodies the dream of many generations of supporters, moved to see him reach the highest levels of the competition after breaking all the records.
The heroes that we then predict are usually men and women who have managed to accomplish something extraordinary starting from the most disadvantaged social position that the world could reserve for them: captains of industry weaned from family who cultivated the land with the sweat of their brow, or internationally renowned actors who have left behind a troubled path, perhaps in some province without memory. They are our modern heroes: for generations of young men like me, but also for the less young.
Before, however, things were different, and the word hero had another meaning, another taste, only in being pronounced. A reminder of this was a retired French couple from Florensac, who left home last week, and arrived at the post office in the small town in southern France, they sent a simple package, where the recipient was at the bottom: Russian Embassy near Paris. In addition to a letter, some medals were well placed that relatives of the Magué family earned during the Second World War. The desire was for them to be given as a present to Ekaterina Prokhorenko, the widow of the last hero of Palmyra. A medal of Knight of the Légion d'honneur, awarded their uncle for having served the Resistance and then deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp at the age of 17, and a Croix de Guerre with palm trees, of which he had been awarded the father of one of the spouses Magué, Boston A-20 bomber pilot who flew for Free France in Lorianne Sqd.
They were then sent with emotion to the family of the lieutenant Alexander Prokhorenko: the twenty-five-year-old Specnaz who during the operations to reconquer the Syrian city of Palmyra remained alone and surrounded by a large group of ISIS militants, and finished the ammunition he prayed on the radio the his commander to direct an airstrike on his coordinates to eliminate the enemy threat. Closing the communication, he said: "They've reached me by now, I don't have ammunition anymore. Thanks commander, tell my family that I love them, that I fought to the end. Please take care of my family, avenge my death, avenge me. Goodbye commander, tell my family that I've always loved them. "
Upon hearing the news, Russian President Vladimir Putin personally invited the Mangé couple to visit their country at the Victory Day Parade which will be held as every year the 9 May in Red Square in Moscow. Russian Ambassador Alexander Orlov then visited the couple, providing them with new passports and visas. At the same time the eighty-year-old Daniel Couture, a resident of Agde, sent his father's Légion d'honneur to the Prokhorenko family.
The news, despite having been disclosed by the official channels of the Russian Embassy, is not having much media coverage; perhaps because as I mentioned at the beginning, today the ideal type of hero takes on other forms or appliances for reasons unknown to me. And also a medal for value, it doesn't make much sense for many, too many people. For the spouses Magué, for Daniel Couture, and for me, Ekaterina Prokhorenko was the wife of a hero of our times, so I thank that someone, a stranger in the times of globalization, has remembered.
