Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (17 page)
Read Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier Online
Authors: James Wharton
When we were just passing time I’d lie on my camp bed outside of the cam net and look up at the stars. I was awestruck by them in the desert. You could see millions and millions. Gibbo, who was a bit of an expert when it came to astronomy, spent hours pointing out various constellations and planets to the rest of us. We could even see satellites orbiting the earth. It was hard to put into perspective what we were doing on this tiny little planet when looking up at the vastness above. Boredom never struck after dark; it was impossible looking up at such a sight.
Once back in Basra, for various reasons (mostly
helicopter-related
), the guys I’d come back with and I found ourselves stuck in the COB for about a week. It was obviously great for us, but I couldn’t help but think it was unfair on the guys out in the desert. Some hadn’t showered in two weeks. I managed to talk with family lots over this time, and even made one or two calls to Thom in between his busy schedule. I was missing him so badly. I’d never been homesick in my four years in the army, but that week back in the COB I really struggled thinking about him and our life, currently on hold, back in the UK. The constant rocket assaults from downtown Basra only fuelled this stress and by the time my week was up, I was pretty much running for the chopper back to Maysan.
21 May 2007
Basra
At 1310 hrs, the incoming siren sounded. I was in bed at the time catching up on some sleep. There isn’t much else to do in the peak of the heat. Suddenly a huge explosion outside went off and I was a bit slow reaching for my helmet and body armour. It was the most deafening noise I’ve ever experienced. The rocket had landed VERY close. With the room shaking, the reality of what was going on struck me. It was terrifying. No ‘all clear’ was given but me and a few others made our way outside the tent to see what the damage was. The rocket had landed about 200 metres away, on the concrete tank park next to our camp. It looked like nobody was hurt but a great dust cloud had been created and the daylight turned to night. Suddenly the incoming sounded again and a split second later another rocket landed, this time even closer. It was a direct hit on our camp and as we all dived for cover, rubble and debris covered us in the explosion. It was the most awful noise I’ve ever heard, like a huge high-pitched screech followed
immediately
by the sound of thunder, only a hundred times louder. My ears are still ringing now as I write this. I honestly think I now have some understanding as to what it might have been like during the Blitz.
On a separate note, I think someone has died today as all the phones and internet have been cut off for most of the day. They do this when someone dies until their loved ones have been told. The last thing someone needs is to find out their husband’s been killed from another soldier’s wife who’s read it on Facebook or something. Makes you think.
It turned out somebody had died. It was announced on the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) radio later that night. It was
the first death of our tour and it drove home the fact that our enemies weren’t to be thought of lightly. They meant business alright. To make matters worse, towards the end of my week at the base, added stress was heaped upon us when it was thought a soldier had been kidnapped from within the COB. The news created anarchy as every single person had to be accounted for. Nobody was allowed to move until everyone was confirmed to be in the right place. The whole thing turned out to be a mistake and I’m not too sure what exactly had caused the panic, but it was enough for me and Kempy to want to prepare ourselves against any such eventuality.
There was a little shop in the middle of our camp run by a local Iraqi man who sold pieces of equipment that a soldier might find useful while serving in Iraq. It was basically a weapons shop that sold pretty much anything you wanted except actual machine guns and other firearms.
When we got to the little shop, set up in a disused large metal container, we found that we weren’t the only ones interested in added protection. There was a small queue going out of the door. The local Iraqi man was enjoying a boom in business from the widespread panic after the false kidnapping alarm. In front of us, two infantrymen from the Royal Welsh were debating which electric taser to buy. They were going for about US $100 and they seemed to be quite a popular choice to protect oneself from being bundled into the back of a van. Without warning, and to the great shock of Kempy and me, one of the two infantrymen, in a moment of curious madness, pressed the button on the hand taser, exposing its nasty blue pulse and stinging his mate in his side. I’d never seen someone collapse to the ground so quickly in my life. Kempy pointed out that the lad had pissed himself while falling to the ground. I have no idea what went through the guy’s mind but the lad recovered shortly afterwards and calmly
punched the other to the ground. Neither of them bought one, nor did Kempy or I. I did buy a cosh though, a sort of metal bar used by the police that extended by flicking the device away from you, and Kempy bought himself some mace spray. Everywhere I went after that I had either my rifle or pistol, my helmet and body armour, and in my pocket my new cosh. No fucker was kidnapping me.
The bombing continued and I patiently watched the clock tick until I was flying to the relative safety of the open desert.
26 May 2007
Basra
At dinner tonight I was caught without my helmet and body armour as the COB came under rocket attack. I’d left my kit by the entrance to the tent while eating my dinner. The siren sounded and while everyone climbed under the tables I was faced with having to run over to the exit to grab my kit. Instead, Corporal of Horse Parker lay on top of me
protecting
my head with his body and his armour. The impact landed quite far off and the all clear sounded soon after, but I was silently moved by this incredible act. Instead of leaving me exposed, scrambling to my protection, the corporal of horse put himself in danger to shield me.
One of the rockets that landed yesterday near our camp failed to detonate. It just dug itself far into the ground and then didn’t explode. The Royal Engineers have been today and have decided to just fill the hole up with concrete. Hope nobody builds a house there in fifty years’ time.
Once back in Maysan, our life of contradictions, at once both simple and difficult, continued. We would set up an FOB, stay for twenty-four hours or so, move to another location, carry out
some obvious patrols so people could see us, sleep in the heat, sunbathe and do the whole thing again. It was becoming
frustrating
not really having anything to do. We weren’t getting any action and we were also starting to lose people through
heat-induced
illnesses and the like. At one point, one person a day was being evacuated out of the desert because of the heat or the harsh desert conditions. Even Mr Olver got airlifted out after being stung by a scorpion. A lad in 4 Troop practically blew himself up after throwing empty fuel cans on a fire one morning. He set most of his upper body on fire after not realising that one of the cans still had fuel in it. Kirky fell ill on his twenty-first birthday and was evacuated out of the desert to Baghdad by two Black Hawk helicopters.
With a lot of bored soldiers trying to pass the time in the middle of nowhere, gambling soon became the norm. Most afternoons in the desert, under the cover of our cam nets, we’d all sit around in a circle and play poker. Nobody had brought cash out into the desert for obvious reasons, so we’d play with IOU notes. Scoffy was the king of the poker table and Danny wasn’t far behind him. Often, I’d get the feeling the two were working as a pair and splitting the winnings. The whole troop would play and would each pay $20 into the table. The winner would get the lot, usually over $100. Scoffy won for about five days in a row and when we were eventually back in Basra, he’d collect his winnings. It was a lot of fun and passed the time; morale was always high and we’d sit around and drink water as if it were beer. I miss those days, but I don’t miss having to cough the money up afterwards.
One evening, and quite out of the blue, we were pulled together for a briefing from the squadron leader. 1 Troop was finally getting a tasking. And a real one at that, not some comedy foot patrol in the middle of the night.
Op Charge was a four-day task which would see 1 Troop
covertly observing a key crossing point on the border with Iran. Under the cover of darkness, we were to move up to the border and find a location to secretly observe the crossing point over the course of the few days. Mr Olver and Gibbo fully knew what to look out for, but all I really understood was that they thought the officials at the border forts on both sides were corrupt and letting people smuggle stuff to and fro. We went en masse and quite heavily armed. Gibbo and even Danny kept saying that this was probably going to be ‘it’. Action at last.
1 June 2007
3 km off Iranian Border
Within the last hour, we have enjoyed a very refreshing thunderstorm. It’s the closest we’re getting to a shower for the foreseeable future. We’re currently hiding in a big ditch with our Land Rover WMIKs [Weapons Mounted Installation Kits] hidden under some cover. Gibbo reckons we won’t have any more rain for months now. I’m not sure how he knows this, but he’s usually right about stuff like that. Before we came out on Op Charge this afternoon, we sat down in a circle to listen to Mr Olver talk about how he hopes the next few days will go. This involved a long chat about the Iranians and what he expected us to do if we somehow got captured, like those navy people did a couple of months ago. His wishes were that if we were to be captured, we were to remain tight-lipped and quite conservative about the whole thing. He said he didn’t want anybody to be on the news looking friendly with our captors. Gibbo, a family man at heart, quite disagreed with Olver, and something that doesn’t happen often actually did. The boss and Gibbo had a full-scale fallout over it. Gibbo’s line was that he’d personally do anything it took to see his wife and kids again, and Olver was having none of it. The whole thing
got quite irate but finished soon afterwards. The rest of us just sat there and watched the ‘grown-ups’ argue it out. I think Gibbo was right, to be fair, though. He ended the argument by saying, ‘Who the fuck are you to tell me how to see my daughters again?’ Olver backed down somewhat. Before
leaving
the FOB, I spoke to Thom on the satellite phone and told him I loved him very much. He told me he missed me. We’re moving up to the border shortly by foot, hopefully as covertly as possible. It’s all very James Bond.
Our first night on the border wasn’t overly exciting. We didn’t get captured and we didn’t really see anything very suspicious. I’m not sure what we were expecting. President Ahmadinejad
walking
up the road with a big rocket under his arm? But we returned to where our vehicles had been stashed, and slept through the daylight hours, taking it in turns to keep a watch-out with the machine gun. Night descended and we repeated our task again that night, this time in a different position.
3 June 2007
Iranian Border
Same as yesterday, not a lot to report really. Progress is quite slow and I’m finding it hard to survive with a very limited supply of water. We didn’t have room to bring as much as we needed, so we’re taking on about half as much as we should be. We’ve moved up to the border and are observing the two forts again, the one in Iraq called Al Fakka and the one up the road in Iran. There’s a road connecting the two forts that’s about 800m long. It’s kind of like no man’s land in between these two forts. There’s a lot of mines lying around from some war in the past. The Iranian fort has a huge Iranian flag draped over the wall that faces Iraq. We’re clearly not being as quiet as we
should be; a couple of young Iraqi boys brought us some bread earlier as a gesture of goodwill. I gave them what sweets I had left. The bread tasted awful! Far worse than my sweets would have tasted. I guess I lost out there!
On the final day of our mission we made an overt move to the Iraqi border fort in broad daylight making as much noise as we could so everybody could see we were there. Scoffy drove Danny and me there; I was on the general-purpose machine gun at the top of the vehicle. Once there, Gibbo and the boss spoke with the Iraqi officials while the rest of us kept our wits about us at the border crossing. Much to Danny and Scoffy’s entertainment, one of the officials at the border point had taken a liking to me and was waving quite bizarrely in my direction. This set the boys off and then the guy came over to our vehicle and gave me a can of freezing cold Coca-Cola… he even blew me a kiss as he handed it over. Incredible.
‘Fucking hell, Ronald! You’ve pulled on the Iranian border,’ said Scoffy in his deep Cumbrian accent. The whole situation was very creepy, but quite hilarious, too.
After Op Charge, 1 Troop adopted a few days of quietness where it was hoped we’d either be flown back to Basra if
helicopters
were available or, failing that, enjoy some quiet time without tasking in the desert as part of the FOB. But that wasn’t to be the case.
6 June 2007
Maysan
After I wrote in here yesterday, we carried on playing a few hands of poker. I also wrote a letter to Dad. Out here, we burn our rubbish daily in a pit dug just next to our cam net. Sometimes, and we’re getting quite used to this now, people
throw dead batteries in their fire pits, which explode making a noise similar to distant gunfire. This happened a few times yesterday and nobody really raised an eyebrow. Suddenly there was a distant bang which made the whole troop, and
probably
the whole battle group, take notice. It sounded just like a mortar being fired off in the distance. And guess what, a few seconds later the eerie whistle of a falling mortar shell filled the air, getting louder and louder as the shell fell closer towards us. We were being attacked. Widespread panic set in and everyone dived for cover in the few seconds we had before impact. I was topless with just my shorts and flip-flops on; four or five of the lads were playing poker and one of the guys was even doing some weightlifting in the shade. It was a little after 6 p.m. and throughout the attack, David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’ played on the stereo in the background. Whenever I hear that song in the future, I’ll always be reminded of the sheer panic and adrenalin that kicked in within a second or two from hearing that dreadful whistle.
I’d dived under one of the WMIKs, hugging on to Shagger’s leg like he was my mum. I was still topless and listening to the explosions, each getting louder and closer. All I wanted was my helmet and body armour. After about the tenth explosion it seemed to all go quiet. Danny threw over a helmet and Scoffy slung me some body armour, which I chucked on still under the WMIK. We now needed to move. Instinctively, we all started to pack everything away. The poker game was well and truly over, but at this point good old-fashioned British humour started to kick in. Scoffy was telling people how gutted he was coz he had ‘two aces in that hand’. Later, we heard that Craig from 4 Troop was actually having a shit at the time. He was joking around, telling people he’d finished his poo
watching
the first few impacts before calmly taking cover. Nobody
was hurt during the attack, we were lucky, but needless to say the battle group moved location pretty sharpish to prevent another attack and possible casualties. Really looking forward to getting back to Basra now, even though they have rockets incoming constantly. Trying to relax best I can, but I know for sure… I don’t want to hear David fucking Bowie again.
