Those who Protect and Serve deserve better...

Many years ago I was running a small (50-seater) restaurant in an area that had once been fashionable, was not exactly run-down but had since seen better days. Locals said it had “character”, which is maybe the most accurate way to describe it. Alas, that also meant the gradual influx of certain “characters”…

I learned the restaurant trade from a gentleman I’d met when he was Warrant Officer in charge of the Officers’ Mess. After leaving the services (he’d paid his dues since Korea) his honed ability to clothe the iron fist in a velvet glove made him mentor to a generation of young restaurateurs.

In the floor-mopping potato-peeling days that are the hospitality trade’s rite of passage from “recruit” to “newbie” (after which, as a “pathetic”, you get to clean the pots and the windows), the rule was: coffee and tea are free to policemen, paramedics, fire-fighters and servicemen: “They do enough for you when they are not here, so when they are, you can give them a cup of thanks.”

I’ve always maintained that policy when I could, so after I took over the all-nighter, word soon spread on the “blue grapevine”. So at any given time, at least one of the tables was taken up by policemen doing their paperwork or paramedics waiting for a call (they could get up and go and pay their dinner bill tomorrow – which they always did). With two more just leaving and another two arriving, it wasn’t unknown to see three patrol cars and an ambulance in front of the door.

A policeman and presumably a member of the piblic (wearing jeans) give paramedics a hand to lift a motorcycle accident victim, already secured to a
backboard, onto their stretcher

There were admittedly also commercial benefits – profits from sandwiches and plats-du-jour more than compensated for a few dozen cups of tea and coffee a day – the tangible result was that initially, several neighbouring establishments were held-up while we were left alone. This prompted people to use the restaurant as a meeting place, because they felt safe. As time progressed, the knock-on effect of the constant presence and movement of policemen meant that crime dropped to a trickle in the entire neighbourhood.

Then – something akin was bound to happen sooner or later – a customer had an asthma attack and would quite probably have died had the guest at the neighbouring table not run out to his ambulance to get his respirator within 30 seconds. A local raconteur quipped that we were “the best place in town to have a heart attack”.

This New Year, the European newspapers were full of reports of how police, paramedics and fire-fighters have to endure violence and threats from the public in the execution of their work. Okay, there is always an element in society, ranging from the actual criminal underworld to lagered-up ranks of football yobs, that will see the police as “the enemy” but hell, even if your IQ matches your shoe size and you’re unable to speak or think in anything but monosyllables, surely it must be patently obvious at some very basic level that the next life a paramedic or fire-fighter saves could be yours?

Some years ago when I was reporting “somewhere in Africa,” A UN relief worker died because a rescue helicopter sent to evacuate him had been downed by stones from an angry mob. Tragic as it was, it was also comprehendible that these naïve, semi-literate and hardly educated tribesmen associated any helicopter with the genocidal ruling regime that frequently shot at them from gunships – mirroring the problem that peacekeepers and armoured UN vehicles face daily around the world. While it doesn’t make any military sense to march onto a 21st Century battlefield wearing a powder-blue helmet, it seems the distinction is slowly filtering down in some places. But this is happening in a purportedly “civilised” Western Europe, by people from a generation with a literacy rate of more than 80% who have probably never seen a military helicopter (except maybe on Navy Day) and never had the slightest cause or excuse to associate ambulances or fire engines with authoritarianism.

Just last week, I took part in the annual Nieuwjaarsduik during which about 36,000 brave Dutch souls – of doubtful mental stability – take to the waters of the North Sea on New Year’s Day at various points along the coast for a (very brief) dive. Our local event attracted about 1,400 confirming its graduation from the  “lunatic fringe” to “main stream”.

But imagine ushering 1,400 people of all ages safely into and out of the North Sea in mid-winter without the close support of Beach & Sea Rescue?

Memebers of Reddingsbrigade Wijk-aan-Zee await an avalanche of nutty Hollanders on New Years' Day

It’s the safety net provided by the presence and expertise of people like this - often volunteers - who make enjoyable community events like this feasible in the first place.

I realise that if emergency and medical personnel were routinely treated according to the Geneva Conventions in society, there would never have been a need for those articles of the Geneva Conventions on the battlefield but I still can’t get my head around the nightmare scenario that an alarming (80%+ according to their respective trades union) number of these people have to endure every day at the hand of the very public they are committed to protect and serve. Paramedics and their vehicles being threatened, stoned or petrol-bombed while trying to stop an accident or stab victim from bleeding to death!

Sometimes, I can but shake my head, because comprehension, let alone solutions evade me – obviously as resolutely as they evade those who govern us. But something is seriously sick somewhere in all of this.

This was not a drill!

Gandhi said we should “be the change we want to see in the world”, so next time you attend an event and see police, fire-fighters or paramedics on standby, make a point of it (as long you don’t get in their way or interfere with their work) to shake at least one of them by the hand and say “thanks for being here”. And if you get the opportunity, buy them a cup of coffee. – AMB

Acquainted With the Night

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

NB! Pictures used in this article are for illustration purposes only and do not necessarily refer to any incidents mentioned above. Faces and vehicle identification marks have been blurred to protect the privacy of individuals.

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