Once again, we have been reminded of how courageously many law enforcement personnel react to their protect-and-serve mandate.

On Christmas morning, a bomb exploded in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It had been placed in a recreational vehicle. The perpetrator had placed a loudspeaker in it, from which a few people nearby may have heard a recording warning them of the bomb.

Many did not hear that warning. What they did hear was six Nashville police officers who had been alerted to the bomb, rushing from door to door, often in close proximity to the recreational vehicle, telling people to get out.

We don’t know how many police officers got to the site in time to undertake that heroic work. We do know some of them were injured — not seriously, thankfully — when the bomb went off.

It is said that police officers, firefighters and other first responders rush into danger even as the rest of us hurry to escape it. Nashville police officers did just that on Christmas morning.

No one can say how many lives they saved. It is clear from the damage the bomb caused and stories told by some of those who escaped apartments that some people would have been killed by the bomb, had they not been evacuated by the brave officers.

Bless them all.

And bless the men and women in our area who would do precisely the same thing in a similar situation.