War Torn (28 page)

Her neat writing continued over the page. Dave closed his eyes. He was in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and that other world in Wiltshire could not influence events here or influence him. It was something that happened concurrently but separately. The camp there, with its wives and children, was a treacherous sea of emotions waiting to drown him. Here, life was clear and straightforward. You were under fire. Your life was under threat. You fired back.

He stuffed the letter back in his pouch. He hadn’t meant to bring it anyway.

Soon afterwards they were cleared to exit the area. Technical officers and support were coming to check for further devices. But 1 Section could go home to Sin City.

Dave sometimes saw the cases of enemy rounds at the base of trees as they rumbled past. Once he saw a sandal. He wondered if its owner was sitting dead in the branches but he couldn’t be bothered to stop the Vector to look.

‘Tell me something,’ the driver said as they bumped back along the track. ‘How the fuck did you know there was an IED there?’

Dave yawned. ‘The interpreter said something about it.’

‘Yeah, but that was after you’d told me to stop. You’d already said there was one ahead. But I couldn’t see the fucker for love nor money.’

‘The surface of the track didn’t look right.’

‘I don’t know how you saw that. I thought you’d gone AWOL for a minute. You were sweating like a pig.’

‘Who isn’t sweating like a pig? But OK, I’ll admit it was a guess. I’d have felt pretty fucking stupid if I’d been wrong.’

‘You weren’t wrong, though. From now on I’m going to make sure I’m always driving you.’

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.’