War Torn

Chapter Thirteen

DAVE DECIDED TO TRY AGAIN, JUST IN CASE JEN HAD BEEN SLOW picking up. But a voice interrupted him.‘Er, Sarge . . . you finished, then? It’s just . . . it’s my bird’s birthday and . . .’You were never alone in an FOB. There was no privacy anywhere. He saw Rifleman Broom from 2 Section hovering awkwardly at the edge of the light.‘Here you are, mate.’ Dave handed over the phone.He strode back to the tent he shared with the sergeant major and the other platoon sergeants.Sitting on his cot he joined in the talk about the day’s success. By the time the company had left the area all resistance had been silenced and Major Willingham was confident that they’d foiled any Taliban hopes of taking the river crossing. And they’d done it without air support.‘So we won it for a day,’ Dave said. ‘How do we know they won’t be back tomorrow?’The others shrugged. It was a question most of them preferred not to ask.‘What was all that crap on the radio when you couldn’t move forward?’ asked Sergeant Barnes of 3 Platoon.Dave groaned and told them how Angus had gone back for Mal’s shotgun.‘I take it you’ve bollocked them both,’ Sergeant Somers of 2 Platoon said.‘Yep.’‘Why the hell did he do it?’‘He screwed up on a foot patrol early on and he’s been trying to make up for it ever since. But that’s not the reason he gave me.’‘What reason did he give, then?’‘He said it’s what his dad would have done.’Everyone groaned. There was no one in the company who hadn’t heard Angus McCall talking about his war hero father.‘Actually,’ CSM Kila said, ‘I don’t blame McCall.’All faces turned to him.‘He was wrong, of course, and you had to bollock him. But all he did was use Taliban tactics against the Taliban. Unlike us, the choggies don’t move around in fucking great platoons with enough hardware to sink a ship. They don’t have men out there carrying eighty pounds of equipment. They run around in their sandals with a rifle slung over one shoulder and maybe a mobile phone, and one of them can halt seventy-five British soldiers just by planting a booby trap in the right place.’Some agreed they could fight better in smaller, lighter units, like the Taliban. Others preferred the safety of a large company.‘But,’ Iain Kila said, ‘the real difference between the way we fight and the way the Taliban fight is down to RoE.’Everyone looked at Dave.Kila said: ‘They aren’t going to let you get away with that bloke in the ditch.’Dave had been questioned twice about the man Mal had shot.‘That pretty monkey is still insisting to the OC that you ordered Bilaal to kill a wounded man. She wants you investigated,’ Kila warned.Dave looked around the tent. ‘Would anyone here have casevaced out a bloke you’d shot and were body-searching for dead? If he was barely showing signs of life? And if carrying him back to the convoy would put your own men’s lives at risk? Would anyone here really have done that?’Everyone shook their head except Sergeant Somers. The ensuing discussion was lively. Dave had meant to get back to the satellite phone and give Jenny one last try but when the talk at last petered out he fell asleep instead.