On June 12, 1944, just six days after D-Day in World War II, a young lieutenant named Richard Winters led his men to the outskirts of Carentan. As the officer in charge of Easy Company, of the 101st Airborne, he was tasked to clear the large French town of its German defenders. It would be a small battle, but it played a significant role in the massive effort to rid the world of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

As Winters led his company up the road toward town, the company started taking machine gun fire from a German MG42. The men instinctively dived for cover into ditches on either side of the road, and stayed there—they froze. Not only was the success of the mission in jeopardy, but the men were easy targets for enemy machine gun and sniper fire.

What happened next proved to be the turning point in the battle for Carentan—it’s the stuff legends are made of. Lt. Winters went into the middle of the road and, with bullets hissing past him, started yelling at his troops to get up out of the ditches and engage the enemy. His words, coupled with his heroic action, motivated the men to get up, get in the fight, and gain a decisive victory over the Germans.

Winters’ disregard for personal safety in his effort to save his men from certain death didn’t just earn him a medal; his actions earned him the love, respect, and admiration of his men. They followed him faithfully from Carentan, through the nightmarish Battle of the Bulge, and on to triumph at Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

Soldiers are willingly follow leaders like lieutenant Winters and those who demonstrate acts of self-sacrifice in the most harrowing of circumstances.

In others words they refuse to be Mediocre, ordinary or average. I will often tell my grandchildren that any dead fish can float down stream.  It takes a live, fighting fish to go upstream against the current. To many of us who are NOT on the front lines of war, settle in to be run of the mill people in our health, finance, relationships, jobs and every day living. We stop pressing, reaching and striving to be the best in life. I am 66 years old and still have a fight in me to be better. At times I become lackluster, average and at times dull in my communication skills. I often regret the things I say and how I say them. I eat things for pleasure and not to be better in health. I do construction projects, critique myself and determine that is was middle of the road.

In War, Athletics, business and everyday LIFE being Mediocre never produces Victory.

Mediocre:    ordinary, average, middling, middle-of-the-road, uninspired, undistinguished, indifferent, unexceptional, unexciting, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian, prosaic, lackluster, forgettable, amateur, amateurish

2 Timothy 2:3-5New American Standard Bible (NASB)

³ Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. ⁴ No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. ⁵ Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he ^[a]does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.