There is a tendency on the part of many people to assume that any and all brave, selfless and heroic actions conducted by American servicemembers while on leave in the civilian world, both here and abroad, must be done by members of the US Marine Corps. The bravery and courage of Marine Corps personnel has garnered such fame over time that even local media on the scene of such events simply come to the immediate assumption that any Americans involved who are in the armed forces and conduct themselves with heroism and courage are Marines.

Indeed, there were few news outlets in the US that did not report that 2 members of the USMC were responsible for neutralizing a gunman who began opening fire aboard a Thalys high speed train en route from Amsterdam to Paris yesterday. The gunman, as of this writing, is reported to be a Moroccan national familiar to Spanish authorities and with possible connections to terrorist elements. The gunman was armed with a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle, a knife, a pistol and several clips of ammunition. The two American servicemen subdued the gunman, one of them sustaining serious injuries in the attack, and disarmed him. Due to their quick thinking and fast action, nobody was killed and what surely would have been a massacre was foiled.

But they weren’t Marines. The American servicemen were members of the US Air Force and US Army National Guard.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris earlier this year and other similar attacks, we are reminded that even a train in Western Europe, tragically like so many other places in the world we assume are safe, can in an instant become the scene of death and carnage. This writer, for one, is grateful that there are people, ordinary people, civilian and military, who in their everyday lives face a terrifying circumstance and step up to the challenge to stop violence and hatred. There is a word for such people. The ones we should emulate and make us all wonder how we would react in a similar crisis. Would you or I face a man armed with an assault weapon and without hesitation engage him before lives were lost and a nation once again grieves? There is a word for such people and it has been much overused. The word is hero.

Let the record show that the two American servicemembers involved who averted what would almost certainly have been a horrifying bloodbath were Airman First Class Spencer Stone, US Air Force, 65th Air Base Group and Spec. Alek Skarlatos, US Army, 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Oregon National Guard.

Thanks, guys.