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A military medal that was awarded to me.
I have never been a member of any nation’s armed forces.
I need the story now
It’s not really that exciting, in retrospect:
I used to work for a charity doing construction in disaster areas; building schools, medical centres, plumbing etc. We’d turn up after wars, floods, earth quakes and other stuff like that. Most of us were single men, with zero attachments or responsibilities, so we took the more (potentially) dangerous jobs out there - purely for the adrenaline and the madness.
On arrival in the country a car load of us traveled 100km-ish away from the capital to scout the location we’d be at. After a day or two there we discovered that the situation on the ground really didn’t match the information we’d been given. A rebel army, of sorts, (maybe a militia, more accurately) had regrouped and were coming back towards us. As we were, uh, not local then there was the potential for some kidnapping - or worse - type shenanigans.
Me, 2 colleagues and our fixer (and his mother) decided to get out of there immediately. We “swapped” the charity’s car for a battered Toyota and some local clothes from our fixer’s uncle. (I’m sure he had about 600 uncles in total…)
We encountered a four man forward operations group of the proper army on the road. They asked us to follow them and detour to a village and help evacuate a group of people. We got there, “borrowed” a coach, loaded it up and then we got out of there, quick sharp. Zero incidents.
I don’t think we got the medal for bravery, as such, but more for a lack of cowardice and just doing the right thing when we really could’ve just fucked-off straight to the capital and boarded a plane out of there.
I didn’t mention it when I got back home because if I did it would just look like I was glazing myself - or lying.
Mate. That's exciting as fuck.
I think we ran on adrenaline, fear, and cigarettes for about seven / eight hours… numb, in a kind of autopilot. Apart from the pressure of a fighting force that we never actually encountered it was like a really aggressive hitchhike ride through some extremely gnarly terrain in an underdeveloped country. It sounds far more exciting, and heroic, than it genuinely was.
But, yeah, between you and me I do think it was a cool as fuck thing to do - and survive…
Literally saved peoples lives, "a bit boring, honest!". I want to see what exciting is to them...
I want to hear the story about the fixer’s mother. She sounds impressive.
She worked and lived in the town we’d driven to. She was like a teacher, nurse, midwife type for the local women and children around there. She’d been campaigning for the “medical centre” we were gonna build. Seemed friendly, but a little suspicious/wary of us; but that’s kind of understandable. Great cook and a good singer. Super passionate about helping people to be well and better themselves.
The rebels weren’t hugely into female autonomy and education our fixer told us… so we told him to go grab her as we swapped clothes and readied the truck.
I didn’t spend much time with her when we began fleeing because me and my two colleagues bounced around in the flat bed of the Toyota whilst she was upfront in the cab with her son.
You could see she’d been crying - hard - when we got to the other village but she then kind of took charge of the situation and got all the folk onto the coach and started taking care of everyone. She was genuinely pretty solid all around, when she needed to be.
I went back about a year and a half later for the same project and she almost hugged me to death and just wept - I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such raw emotion.
Nothing but respect for her.
Doubling other commenter. This absolutely is insane and cool and worthy of a medal.
Imagine their entire family has no idea where the medal came from, but like 12 random people on the internet have the full story.
Similar for me: two challenge coins of units that did not officially exist (at that time).
Good stuff. I really think It’s a genuine honour to be an outsider whose actions are recognised and applauded by insiders. It’s basically professionals looking at beginners and saying: good job, well done. It warms my little cockles.
I have a "challenge coin" someone made for an online community I'm a part of