Youth criminals steal a safe containing Vietnam War medals and $10,000 cash from Townsville home

A Townsville woman is appealing for help after her father’s Vietnam War medals and $10,000 were stolen during a break-in of her home.

Replicas of the Active Service Medal Vietnam, Vietnamese Campaign Medal Australia Defence Medal and Vietnamese Campaign Star.

A Townsville woman is appealing for help after her father’s Vietnam War medals and $10,000 were stolen during a shockingly brazen break-in of her home in Bushland Beach.

Leanne Davis said the break in of youths who escaped in a stolen car on Sunday night was the second burglary of their home in a year.

Mrs Davis, who along with husband Adam are originally from Brisbane, told the Townsville Bulletin that the family were now prisoners in their own home and her father Ashley Thomas Hardinge’s medals were gone.

“The medals mean a lot to me as my father is deceased, these are the last things I have of him … it’s devastating.”

She said even though they were insured, there was no way you could put a price on the medals.

“How do you put a price on something that is sentimental? You can’t. No money is going to replace it.”

Leanne Davis in Bali. Picture: SUPPLIED

Mr Hardinge, who was born in Brisbane in 1948 and passed in 2001, served with the most decorated Royal Australian Navy unit of the Vietnam War, the RAN Helicopter Flight Vietnam (RANHFV), from September 9, 1970, to June 16, 1971.

Mrs Davis, a finance manager at Townsville Auto Group, said the missing medals were the Active Service Medal Vietnam, Vietnamese Campaign Medal, Vietnamese Campaign Star and an Australia Defence Medal.

A unit citation, which was also inside the safe, has been recovered and returned.

Mrs Davis said five adults were awake inside in the two-storey home when the burglary occurred, with the youths gaining access through her elderly aunt’s bedroom door – open to let her dogs in and out – on the ground floor as she watched television in her lounge.

Also downstairs were Mrs Davis’s adult daughter and finance watching television in their bedroom with Mr and Mrs Davis upstairs.

She said the thieves quickly located her aunt’s handbag, containing her car keys, and the safe, which was not attached to the floor as they had only been in the home for 12 months, containing the medals and her aunt’s cash.

She said they were alerted to the burglary when the garage door was being lifted in an attempt to steal her aunt’s car, which was blocked in by other vehicles.

Mrs Davis said her husband had rushed downstairs and confronted the burglar who ran off toward the stolen silver Toyota Corolla shielding their identity in the dark by holding up their mobile phone flashlights outward.

Australian Army armoured operations in Vietnam. An RAAF Iroquois Helicopter of No. 9 Squadron hovers over an Australian Army Centurion tank patrol in South Vietnam. The helicopters are partners in the Australian Task Force with the newly arrived Centurions, both in action in Operation Pinnaroo in Phuoc Tuy Province in 1968.

“Even when Adam went close to the car, they put that up on the car windscreen so again it was reflecting out and you couldn’t see them and they had their high beams on so you couldn’t read the number plate.”

She said the burglars were young and indigenous.

“These are the younger ones going around and stealing the cars and everything at the moment.”

She was worried the thieves would return.

“Now we’re made to lock every door, every window, everything, we are made to feel like prisoners in our own home.”

Mrs Davis said crime had become worse over the five years they had lived in Townsville.

“It’s getting worse, not better, I mean what do you do? It took police two days to come out and see us because of all of the crime that is happening in Townsville.”

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According to the Royal Australian Navy, the RANHFV was integrated with the United States Army 135th Assault Helicopter Company (AHC) flying the Iroquois utility and gun-ship helicopters and officially designated the Experimental Military Unit, or EMU.

“The role of the 135th AHC was to provide tactical air movement of combat troops, supplies and equipment in air-mobile operations,” the RAN website says.

“This included augmentation of army medical services, search and rescue and the provision of a command and control aircraft capability to supported units.”

The RANHFV, which was “continuously engaged in offensive operations” during its four years of operations, was awarded the Unit Citation for Gallantry in 2018.

Mrs Davis said the war changed her father, a Naval Air Mechanic Weapons, who walked out on his family when she was nine and later remarried.

“He was too young when he went, that’s what mum said, he came back and was really bad, and hence why the marriage didn’t last.”

Originally published as Youth criminals steal a safe containing Vietnam War medals and $10,000 cash from Townsville home