Article content continued

The stirring simplicity of “Let’s go, go!” recalls the final words of Todd Beamer. A software salesman who was on United Flight 93 on 9/11 when the plane was hijacked, Beamer realised that the terrorists planned to fly the aircraft into a target. With several fellow passengers, he decided to storm the cockpit. After reciting the 23rd Psalm, Beamer can be heard on a recording quite clearly addressing his impromptu band of brothers: “Are you ready? OK. Let’s roll.”

[np_storybar title=”Full Briefing” link=”https://twitter.com/full_briefing”]

Psst…do you like politics? Sign up for the Post’s wry new morning newsletter, Full Briefing. Click here.[/np_storybar]

[np_storybar title=”Read & Debate” link=””] Find

Full Comment on Facebook

[/np_storybar]

Not everyone who finds themselves in the valley of the shadow of death can summon such can-do courage. Actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who was with his girlfriend and two children on the train, reports that Thalys staff barricaded themselves in after fleeing from the gunman. “As screaming passengers pounded on the locked doors, nobody replied,” Anglade said, adding “it was terrible and unbearable. For us, it was inhuman.”

Until recently, if you typed “French military victories” into Google, up would come the question: “Do you mean French military defeats?”

Like most good jokes, it contains a grain of truth. As if to draw a veil over the train staff’s cowardice and over the embarrassing fact that French police had been warned that the gunman, Ayoub El-Khazzani, was a possible threat, President Hollande was quick to award the Legion d’Honneur to the four foreign heroes. The whole thing felt hurried through, as though the heroism of their actions should be kept to the fore, allowing more troubling aspects – what the hell was a suspected jihadist doing wandering around? – to be pushed conveniently to one side.