War Torn

Chapter Twenty-five

1 SECTION HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO SHOWER SINCE RETURNING TO Sin City. There was no water. So they’d kicked off their boots and changed into shorts and flipflops and were lounging on their cots or cleaning their weapons when there was the deafening crash of a mortar.‘Stand to! Stand to!’Everyone groaned.Jamie sat up, shirtless. He’d been showing off his spectacular high-calibre bruise. Binns, who was taking pictures of it from different angles, put down his camera. Finn rolled over. Angus and Mal closed their eyes as if that would make the mortar attack go away. Streaky Bacon looked alarmed and then swigged more water as though someone was going to confiscate it.‘Come on, lads,’ Sol yelled. ‘Stand to!’‘Maybe there won’t be any more now . . .’Mal’s words were drowned by the sound of AK47s.The men responded like sleepwalkers.‘Get up, get going, get out there,’ Sol shouted. ‘Helmets! Boots!’There was another ground-shaking crash and the men accelerated a little. But not much. Angus put his boots on the wrong feet, Binns couldn’t find his helmet. Jamie winced as he pulled on body armour. Streaky, who’d been cleaning his weapon, tried to put it back together again but found nothing would fit.‘Lucky for us 2 Platoon are on the .50 cals tonight.’ If the heavy machine guns were always sited in the same place, the enemy soon worked out their arcs of fire. So every contact the .50 cals had to be moved.‘We’ve already spent three hours fighting today,’ Finn grumbled.‘Three hours?’ Bacon said. ‘Three hours!’He could remember every moment of today’s battle. He’d remember it for ever. But it seemed to last seconds rather than hours.‘Oh, right,’ Sol said. ‘I’ll go and explain that to the Taliban and ask if they’ll come back tomorrow, then. Get out there!’The men ran to their firing positions at a loping pace and returned fire half-heartedly. Dave watched Binns. He was trying hard; he knew he had a lot to make up for. The others had teased him and Sol had talked to him but Dave knew he would have to grip the lad. Binns obviously knew that too; he’d been avoiding him.‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Dave said to Jamie. ‘You should be lying down. You heard what the medic said.’He’d advised him again to go to Bastion for a proper check-up, but without success.‘I’m fine,’ Jamie insisted.The one man who remained focused and kept firing was Angus. Straight after today’s ambush, Dave had noticed the subtle changes in the lad’s demeanour. Angus held himself differently. His face was sharper and he moved with a new confidence. Dave recognized this sudden maturity. Kill a man and age a year, he thought to himself.The fighting stopped as suddenly as it had started. Everyone waited for a renewed attack. Men stayed in position but they relaxed. Angus got down into some cover and lit a cigarette.‘You were good today, McCall,’ Dave said. He knew Angus would understand his previous failures had been forgiven. Even though it was dark, he could see the big lad blush in response. He thought he saw Angus’s tattoos blush as well. To his relief, Angry did not use the occasion to mention his father.No one trusted the silence but when it continued the men gradually stood down.Thirty minutes later, in 1 Section’s tent, Dave found Jamie fast asleep. ‘Thank God for that.’Binns and Bacon were sitting on their cots with their boots on.‘The medic gave him a mountain of pain relief and he was out like a light,’ Binns said.‘Good,’ Dave said. ‘Now boots off, you two, if you’re getting your heads down.’The two lads immediately sat bolt upright.‘Or if you’re not getting your heads down you should get over to the cookhouse with the others.’‘Not hungry,’ Bacon said.Binns could not meet Dave’s eye.‘Eat anyway. And drink. I’ve got a lot to say to you about your performance today during the ambush, Bacon, and the first thing is that you didn’t drink enough.’‘I know.’ Streaky nodded. ‘I just didn’t think of it.’‘It’s easy to forget, especially when you’re fighting. But in those temperatures, by the time you realize, it’s often too late.’He turned to Binns.‘What have you got to say for yourself, lad?’Binns looked wretched. He stared at the ground and fiddled with a corner of his sleeping bag liner. Dave noticed a framed picture which Binns had evidently been looking at and shoved beneath the cot at his arrival. A pretty girl smiled out from it. She was sensibly dressed and her hair was neatly brushed. A girl-next-door type, the sort who worked in a building society.‘Sorry, Sarge,’ he muttered.‘Listen, Binns, I blame myself for not gripping you earlier. It was one hell of an ambush and I was so fucking busy I couldn’t get on top of you and neither could Sol. Normally I would have noticed earlier and I would have made you pull yourself together.’‘I couldn’t help it, Sarge.’‘You could. It didn’t happen during the mortar attack this evening, did it?’‘No. I felt a bit safer here at the base with three platoons firing back.’‘An ambush is a tough call for your first fire fight but I don’t want any excuses. You fucked up badly today and you’ve got a lot of ground to make up now.’Binns looked as though he was going to cry. But Dave knew he had to be merciless, for Binns’s sake and everyone else’s. He was glad the boy’s mother, or the sweet-faced girlfriend, couldn’t see him.‘We were in the shit today. We weren’t just fighting for ourselves but each other, and we were fighting hard. No one could stand over you, our hands were full. And you were a dead weight. You were sitting in the Vector or puking at the back and relying on us to take care of you. That’s not team playing, is it?’‘No, Sarge.’‘You’ve had the training, Binns. Now put it into practice. We’re not going to carry you, so pull your weight or get out of this platoon.’Binns nodded. He still could not look Dave in the eye.‘OK, Binns, go eat. And don’t be surprised if all the lads tear you apart for what happened today. You’ll have to work hard to make them forget it.’Jack Binns sloped off, head hanging.‘By the way,’ Dave called after him. The lad paused and turned. ‘You’re on shit duty for a week.’‘Yes, Sarge,’ Binman said.Dave watched him go. Over in his cot, Jamie turned over, snored for a moment and then fell silent. Dave sat down on Binns’s cot and turned to Streaky Bacon. ‘And how do you think you did today?’‘Did some good rap,’ Bacon grinned.‘You did what?’Streaky’s smile wavered.‘Got some good flow. Good rhymes and raps in my head while I was fighting,’ he said. ‘I’m a rapper, see.’Dave, who ten minutes ago had felt tired and in need of food, felt the sudden rush of energy that anger brings.‘A rapper!’ he said, jumping to his feet. ‘Did you say you’re a rapper?’Bacon wished for a moment he’d never heard of hip hop.‘Well . . .’ he said, ‘I try to do a bit of rap, see, and—’‘No, no, no!’ said Dave, the strength of his own fury surprising him. ‘You’re a soldier! You didn’t come to Helmand Province to rap about it. You didn’t do all that training and travel all this way to sit there under fire thinking that IED rhymes with ABC or I can’t see or fly with me!’He did not miss Bacon’s look of fleeting admiration for these fast rhymes. But the admiration was rapidly replaced by trepidation as Dave went on.‘You’re a soldier, Bacon. That means you’re here to fight not fuck about giving it MC Bacon. While we were saving your bacon, Bacon, you sat on your arse working out that yes I can and kill that man rhymes with Taliban. Is that fucking fair?’Bacon said nothing. His deep brown eyes shifted from side to side.‘I’ve asked you a question,’ Dave said. ‘Now answer it. Is it fair for you to sit writing rap while your mates fight for their lives and yours?’There was a pause.‘No,’ Bacon said.‘No WHAT?’‘No, Sarge.’Dave sighed and sat back down.‘OK. You wrote some fucking good rap today. Apart from that triumph, how else did you do?’Bacon rolled his eyes upwards and straightened his body.‘Well, Sarge, I think I did OK.’‘What makes you think that?’‘I got some rounds down.’‘Well, yes, you’re a soldier, that’s what you’re paid to do.’ ‘And I think I killed at least one man.’‘Oh, yeah?’‘I saw him fall. Only . . . the woman just may have shot him because she fired too.’‘Where was he?’‘They were everywhere except on one side and, understand see, Sarge, I thought if they ran forward we’d be completely surrounded, and that didn’t make me feel good so I was watching. And when he ran forward I got him.’Dave nodded.‘Good thinking, Bacon. How many rounds before you shot him?’‘Well, I don’t know. A lot . . .’‘You had rounds left for him, did you?’‘Well, yes, I did, Sarge.’‘How many rounds did you have left at the end of the ambush?’‘Altogether, Sarge?’‘Yep. Bandolier, magazines, how many altogether?’‘Well, I counted. Twenty.’‘Twenty.’‘Yes, Sarge.’‘Christ. Well, that tells me a few things. First, you were firing too much, too quickly. You were told to slow it but you couldn’t stop, could you?’‘Well, Sarge, I thought—’‘It was an ambush. We were under siege conditions and we’d been told to wait a long time for air support because we needed an Apache. There was no point a Harrier dropping a five-hundred-pound bomb or we’d all have been blown to Paradise. We had to wait for a fucking Apache to do some targeting because the choggies had closed in on us. If the Apache had taken another twenty minutes, we’d have been out of ammo. Because a sprog like you was just throwing it down.’‘I didn’t throw it, Sarge.’‘Well did you know what you were firing at?’‘No one could see the flipflops, Sarge.’‘You should have stopped and looked at the other men. Did you watch Angus, for instance?’Streaky shook his head.‘If you had, you’d have noticed that he was thinking before he fired. When the rounds closed in he assessed where the Taliban firing points were. He didn’t just poke his weapon out from behind the Vector and send as much fire up the track as fast as he could. He didn’t try to turn an SA80 into a machine gun, Bacon.’Streaky hung his head.‘Well, I killed one guy,’ he said stubbornly.‘Maybe one of the fifty rounds you threw at him did hit him. Or maybe the woman sergeant from the Intelligence Corps got him in three. We’ll never know. But I do know that I saw you refilling your magazines when you’d used up all your ammo.’Bacon blinked at him.‘What should you do, Bacon?’ asked Dave. ‘When you’re using up ammo fast, when should you refill? Should you wait until it’s all gone, then refill?’‘Erm . . .’‘When three magazines are empty, change. Wait for a quiet period or pull back for a few minutes and change. Don’t wait until you’re clean out. Because you never, ever, ever want to find yourself out there with a weapon and no ammo.’‘Oh, yeah,’ Bacon said. ‘We did that in training.’‘Glad your training didn’t desert you completely. But in training guys sit behind you and remind you. This was a real fire fight with a real enemy and we were all too fucking busy to sit behind you. And if we’d been overrun and you’d ended up defending yourself, you wouldn’t have had the ammo to do it with. Now let me ask you another. What did you do with your empty magazines?’Streaky grimaced.Dave told him the answer: ‘You dropped them on the ground. And let other people pick them up for you. Like your mum goes into your bedroom and picks your clothes up off the floor. But you’re not at home, now, Bacon, your mum’s not here to clear up after you and you pick up your own fucking magazines, got it?’‘Yes, Sarge.’‘So let’s run over those points again, Bacon. One: drink more. I don’t want to see you coming home to base with a half-full Camelbak again. Two: fire less. Don’t waste ammo, choose your target. And don’t wait until you’re clean out to get more. Three: clear up your own fucking magazines.’Bacon hung his head and nodded.‘I have to tell you this to make a good soldier of you.’ Dave’s tone softened. ‘That way you stay safe. And so do your mates.’Bacon didn’t look up.‘You’re on shit jobs with Binns for a week. Now get something to eat.’Bacon stood up. His face was sullen and angry. His rolling, swaggering walk had a touch of insolence about it. This lad did not take criticism well, even necessary and practical criticism. But it crossed Dave’s mind that he had gripped Streaky Bacon a bit hard tonight. Maybe he should have congratulated him on killing one Taliban fighter and for keeping his nerve in an unnerving first ambush, especially when his mate was falling to pieces.‘Poor bastard, it was his first time.’Dave had forgotten he was not alone. He turned towards Jamie but whatever snippets of the conversation he’d heard, it seemed he had fallen back into a medicated sleep again.‘Shut up, Dermott, or I’ll have you casevaced,’ he said affectionately, thinking that Jamie was right and he was wrong but there was almost no one else in the platoon who was allowed to tell him so.He got up. He didn’t regret a word he’d said to Streaky. But he was beginning to regret the words he hadn’t said.

CSM Kila sat with Dave and the other platoon sergeants in the cookhouse. Sergeant Barnes of 3 Platoon had spent the day with the civilians.‘That fucking woman professor . . .’‘What! Emily? The sex grenade? Ventured out of her isobox?’‘Emily. The pain in the arse. Ventured all over the fucking shop. And if you thought Martyn Robertson was difficult, you try working with her. She wants to go where she likes when she likes and sod everyone else. Picks up her shopping bag and marches off as if she’s just on her way to market and doesn’t want to miss a bargain.’‘Apparently,’ Kila said, ‘she has one of the finest geophysical brains in England.’‘Yeah, well, the finest geophysical brain in England could get splattered all over Helmand if she doesn’t use it more. I said: “Professor, have you noticed that we soldiers generally move around in platoons? That’s about thirty soldiers, Professor. Well that’s to keep us safe. If you wander off like that then you could become an enemy target, Professor.”’‘What did she say?’‘She says: “I have no enemies, Corporal.” I say: “Professor, I am in fact a sergeant.” She says: “Army ranks are of no interest to me because I am not fighting a war. I am carrying out an analysis of Afghanistan’s natural resources.”’‘Fucking hell,’ Dave said.‘Fucking hell,’ the other sergeants agreed.‘The finest geophysical brain in England and not one ounce of common sense,’ Dave said.He told the others about today’s ambush.‘And this evening my head’s caning and so’s everyone else’s, the medic gave us all something. It’s got to be because we were so close to the explosion.’‘You were bloody nearly in the fucking explosion,’ Sergeant Somers of 2 Platoon said.‘We should never have been sent on that route without manpower. They had us pinned down and we didn’t have the men or the fire to keep them back much longer.’Kila promised he’d talk to Major Willingham again about unnecessary risks.When the other two sergeants had gone, Kila leaned forward and said quietly: ‘There’s a rumour going round about you, Dave.’Dave raised his eyebrows and tried to think what that rumour could be.‘That you’re leaving the army.’Dave stared at him. The CSM stared right back.‘Where the hell did you hear that?’‘From Wiltshire.’‘Wiltshire!’ Then Dave realized. ‘Oh, someone’s been talking to Jenny. But what the hell has she been saying?’‘She told Steve Buckle’s wife who told someone who told someone who told . . . well, I don’t know who. Anyway, people are talking about it.’Dave felt angry with Jenny. She had started a rumour which had clearly slipped beyond the circle of gossiping wives to the NCOs. It couldn’t have come to Iain Kila through his wife because, although he’d already had three, he didn’t have one at the moment.‘Jenny’s thinking of me leaving the army,’ Dave said. ‘I’m not.’Kila looked sympathetic. ‘They all go through that one.’‘Well the baby’s due soon. And Jenny spends a lot of time with Leanne Buckle . . .’‘How’s Steve, then?’‘Haven’t heard yet. Leanne’s with him in Selly Oak. What happened to Steve certainly scared Jen, though. She’s only started this stuff about leaving the army since Steve’s accident.’Kila shrugged. ‘You were a soldier when you married her, weren’t you?‘Yeah. She knew what she was letting herself in for. But when I remind her about that she says it makes no difference. And today I got this long letter begging me to leave. And there’s a letter from her mother I haven’t even opened which probably says the same thing.’‘Just ignore it.’‘You don’t know Jen. She’s like a dog with a bone once she gets an idea into her head.’ Actually, Jenny’s determination was one of the things Dave loved about her. Unless she was determined to make him do something.‘Then string her along. Aren’t you doing a degree course through the army?’Dave laughed. The classes he’d attended and the coursework he’d finished seemed far away and trivial, like a game he used to play.‘Engineering,’ he said. ‘I work on it when we’re not operational or away training. So that’s not very often.’‘Well,’ Kila said, ‘when do you expect to finish?’‘It’ll take years and years at this rate.’‘So tell her you’ll leave when you’ve got your degree.’Dave chuckled. ‘Good idea, Iain! She’ll have to agree it’ll improve my job prospects.’Kila grinned back. ‘Women. You just need to know how to handle them.’‘Not much chance here for you to practise your handling skills.’Kila’s grin broadened meaningfully. Dave squinted at him.‘Well I knew the boss was after the Intelligence Corps bird but I didn’t think you . . .’‘I’m not interested in that iceberg. Or Professor Sex Grenade. That only leaves one.’‘Not the monkey!’Kila leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘There’s a limit to how far I can go here at the base of course. But between you and me, I wouldn’t say no to a bit of monkey business.’