A Hero

Very few people know the name Nguyen Sy Huy.

He was twenty-four years old when he died; he was carrying an AK47 and passing out of the jungle when a young twenty-year-old Australian shot and killed him.  It was wartime, of course - casualties occur, but for Tom Williamson, the young man who fired the shots that ended Huy's life, casualties come in many forms.  For Tom, it seems he lost not only his innocence that day, but his sense of peace.

Samantha Hawley pens the story for the ABC News Service in Australia.  Her main objective was to give a narrative of the devastating effects of war on those who are called into its sphere.  This young man, Tom Williamson, has never forgotten that day, nor will he ever.  After Huy was pronounced dead, Williamson's commanding officer helped him strip the body and bury it.  Later, the officer gave Tom the Vietnamese soldier's effects: his compass and his hammock.  Williamson brought them back to Australia, put them in his lock box and never took them out again.

Not for forty years.

But Tom could never feel that sense of peace.  So, with the help of Ngo Thi Thuy Hang, the founder of Marin, a Vietnamese non-governmental organisation committed to searching for information about Vietnamese soldiers missing in action, he returned to Vietnam to return Huy's effects to his relatives.

Can you imagine it?  Can you imagine after so long returning to a family whose life you destroyed?  It's different for war, I suppose.  In mankind's ceaseless attempt to overpower, pawns are used to pivot the world's struggle for supremacy - pawn's like Tom Williamson.

But what about the war that is raging in our quest for escape?  What about the war on drugs?  Who are the prisoners of war that are tortured?  Who are the generals who send the napalm of ice, cocaine, heroin and LSD wiping out swaths of young life?  Who is the enemy and how should they be punished?

Certainly, it is the drug dealers, but even moreso, it is the drug makers - the cartels of the powerful who create the essence of evil which erases the minds of so many young people worldwide.  Would it not be of the greatest importance to let the punishment fit the crime?  Even as I imagine young Tom Williamson's greatest regret of taking another life, of living with the guilt and unimagined grief in another country far away; and even as I imagine his return to that jungled land searching for the tormented souls who never have known what happened; and even as I imagine him asking for forgiveness in the midst of the tear streaked faces...

Would this not be fitting for the drug dealers and the drug makers?  Would it not be duly appropriate that for their punishment, they would have to journey to the home of every person who has experienced the thievery of life because of these drugs?  Would it not be the best form of pain for this axis of evil to sit in the midst of the tormented mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands who have had their lives obliterated by drugs?

To have them kneel in the ocean of pain that they have created because of their thirst for money and power.  This is what they should receive.  This is how they should spend the rest of their days.

Instead, though, most drug dealers and drug barons leave the treachery of their potions to others and the havoc that has ensued, especially the devastation that occurs when drugs take a young life, creates a life of difficulty for the real heroes.

The police officers. 

They are left with the lonely task of crisply walking to the door, rapping in the pitched night after all have gone to sleep; they stand, hat under arm, waiting with heart beating loudly in their throats to tell one more mother, one more son, that someone they loved has had their life stolen from them.

Unfortunately, all helping professions have come under attack from the Apache helicopters of our media.  In the ever-present hunger to scoop the headline news of negativity, the media chooses to report the singularities that occur in the high stress occupations of saving and protecting lives.  And now, these doctors, teachers and especially police officers must protect themselves at all times - record every single moment of their working lives - so that they aren't pulled apart at the seams by the very people they have pledged to protect.

This police officer, this hero, that we worked with, was not what I was expecting.  Sarah is a quiet and demure woman and mother of two.  She lives in the town of Charleville, her house is across the street from a park.  In their backyard is an inflatable water castle situated in the middle of charred grass.  Sarah is a good cook and a doting mother and partner.

And yet at the same time, she is a senior constable, on a team of many heroes, in charge of promoting a drug prevention program aimed at eradicating the very thing that is erasing the future of so many young people in Australia.  If you were to approach Sarah in her uniform, you would see a tall, confident woman proudly wearing her dark blues, utility belt rife with protective items.  On her head is a billed hat with the checkerboard white and blue.  She is fit and if you were to see her from a distance, she is a solid force to be reckoned with, but as you get to know her, she is an easy-going, personable citizen of Charleville.

She cares.  I think that's the thing that blew me away.  She really cares about people; it's not fake whatsoever.  She desperately wants to see people succeed and even in the midst of the tragedies of the job, she seeks a better future. You can see it when she runs a boxing class for young kids or she speaks jokingly with high schoolers.  You can see it in Senior Constable Grayson's life.

She's a hero.

As project W.A.S.T.I.D. took shape, it became increasingly more evident that this project was not about the present but about the future.  That's what heroes do: they preserve the future by protecting the present.

We would hear stories of the Charleville Police Service in the upcoming days.  Some great stories from her partner Mark, who drove the bus with me and a group of primary school age kids on a trip through the desert.