21 years old. That is so young. He played football and was a member of the bush fire brigade from a country family on Kangaroo Island. He did not want to be the centre of attention but the tragic loss of a wonderful life means, so sadly, he is. I keep thinking of Jamie, Sapper Jamie Larcombe.
Three years in the army and on the first tour of Afghanistan. They obviously got photos off Facebook and they are on the TV so I hope they asked the family. The public announcements mention his girlfriend. I remember when I had girlfriends. That was before I had partners and long before I had a wife. That was pretty magic time when I had girlfriends.
So what does Jamie want of us or more to the point, me? I imagine that he would have known the risks. Corporal Atkinson from the same 1st Combat Engineers Unit was killed less than a month before. What Australia does Jamie want me to strive for? He has posthumously earned a greater right as he has paid a higher price. Yes he has paid, at the age of 21, a price than you and I hope that we will never be asked to pay.
Jamie's name will now be in brass or whatever that metal is that is on that wall at the War Memorial. I will look out the front door of the building at the other end of the street and I will think from time to time of Jamie.
Maybe some days I will get carried away with some vengeful thought about someone who has done me wrong. Then as I walk across the marble on a short cut to the cafeteria I will look out the front door and I will hopefully think of Jamie and think how puerile and self indulgent my problems are compared to what he sacrificed.
I flew over Afghanistan on the way back from Europe recently. Everyone was asleep and the shades pulled down but I checked it on the flight map at the screen at the front of the plane. There was a small window in the toilet so I stared out.
It looked like a dry, mountainous, hard place, and if it was not Afghanistan I bet Afghanistan looks just like it. It has been fought over, fought around for thousands of years and they are still fighting.
Afghanistan is right next door to a country that has nuclear weapons and it harbours a group of people who like to murder certain innocent people anyway they can because they believe that is what God wants them to do. Jamie and an Afghani interpreter were trying to stop these people. People ordered other people to kill Jamie because he was trying to stop them from being able to murder other people. Maybe the person who shot Jamie did not fully understand the politics but his boss did.
The Australian Army is paying a high price for the fight we are taking up in Afghanistan. Jamie is the 23rd Australian to lose his life in this battle. It maybe easy to think of it as a number, but these are actual people. Young men predominantly, only starting their lives and so are the people they are fighting.
Bravery is when you know the risks and you are completely cognisant of the consequences. Bravery is not driven by anger or malice. Bravery is driven by a noble determination for good.
Our armed forces are fighting for a noble and worthwhile cause. Part of the war is to protect Australians from being killed or maimed by terrorists across the world. We should seek and destroy those who would otherwise come here and destroy us. I fervently believe they will if we don't.
But this necessarily means that the burden of combating evil is undertaken by a few for the benefit of many. Many never realise and sometimes, unfortunately, they disregard that this price is continually being paid and this risk is continually being faced.
Not one political party, I can happily say, disregards the enormity of this sacrifice. I offer this as hopefully some sense of comfort for those who have lost so much. Even though there might different arguments about the purpose of the engagement, I have never heard one person rise up in the Senate and question the enormity of their sacrifice or the quality of the character of the person who made it.