I say he’s an hero! Best wishes to Joe Darby. And a big thank you!

(CBS) Like most soldiers serving in Iraq, Joe Darby just wanted to go home when his time was up. But blowing the whistle on his unit members for abusing Iraqi prisoners changed all that, and now the former military police specialist lives in an undisclosed city with his wife, still worried for their safety.

Darby talks to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, this Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

“I worry about the one guy who wants to get even with me, and that one guy could hurt me and my family,” says Darby. That one guy could be from his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where many in his unit lived.

What were his friends and neighbors saying about him after they learned he gave photos to authorities showing U.S. soldiers, some from Cumberland, abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison? “He was a rat. He was a traitor. He let his unit down and the U.S. military. Basically, he was no good,” Colin Engelbach, commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter, says he heard townspeople say. It was hard on Darby. “These were people who knew me since I was born. my parents’ friends, my grandparents’ friends, that turned against me.”

Says Engelbach, “I agree that his actions…were no good and borderline traitor.” He understands Darby was reporting a crime. “But do you put the enemy above your buddies? I wouldn-t.”

There was a time when Darby was frightened enough of those buddies to sleep with a gun. Right after giving military authorities the pictures, the investigation began and he was worried that some of the accused might find out he had turned in the pictures and could retaliate. “[The accused] still had their weapons…unlimited access to the facility and me the whole time,” Darby tells Cooper. “[I] slept with a pistol under my pillow, loaded, with my hand on it and cocked it. Every night.”

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