The circumstances in these two suicides are quite different; do they both exhibit courage? If the two suicides had been stopped before ignition, would our later descriptions of their courage be the same as it would have been if they had been successful (as they both were in fact)? Might they have been deemed insane if they had failed?

On D-Day (WWII) landing craft approached the Normandy shore, opened the front end, and soldiers surged forward toward the beach. Some of the first men out were dead from enemy fire before the last of the men ran toward the sands. Meanwhile, at the Auschwitz concentration camp, newly arrived Jews quietly moved about on the railroad platform as the Nazi guards sorted them for immediate or delayed death.

The success of the Normandy Invasion required more than courage: fortitude, resolution, strength, compliance, mental stability, tenacity, a certain blindness to probability -- all manner of responses that keep a soldier moving toward death or success were required. Were these same responses present among the Jews between their arrests and arrivals at the death camps? (I never hear it mentioned.)

One of the preferred ways of dismissing an actor in an historical event is to describe him as cowardly. The 9/11 attack on the United States was dismissed as "cowardly." Robert Ford is referred to as the "dirty little coward who laid Jesse James in his grave." in a folk song. Jesse James was a wanted man with a price on his head for many murders. Shouldn't we be grateful that Robert Ford dispatched this social deviant and criminal at an opportune moment?

I think courage (and cowardice) both take many guises and depend rather heavily on context.