Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (18 page)
Read Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier Online
Authors: James Wharton
I enjoyed being part of 1 Troop, but in the days that followed us being attacked in the desert, I was becoming increasingly stressed and agitated. Our return to Basra was delayed day after day which really took its toll on everyone. During this time, I was extra glad to be with Danny and Scoffy, as the pair really worked hard to cheer me up and keep me happy. I woke up after one afternoon’s sleep to Danny saying, ‘Look what I’ve named our vehicle…’
On the side of our WMIK, Danny had painted in pink letters ‘Killer Queen!’ and was really delighted with himself. I too thought it was brilliant and just the simple gesture of it all really cheered me up.
Eventually, 1 Troop was back in Basra and enjoying some days of rest and downtime from the harshness of desert existence, and although we were diving for cover almost constantly, the promise of a hot shower and some privacy seemed to block out all of the negative factors.
Back in Basra, I didn’t have Kempy to keep me entertained: he’d caught chicken pox from somewhere and was bedded down in isolation. I spent most of the time with Danny and Scoffy, sipping on milkshakes and putting away a lot of food; the Pizza Hut that had been opened in the middle of the COB sure took some money off the three of us. I also attended a few repatriation services throughout the week. I felt it important to pay a final respect to a fallen soldier before them being flown out of Iraq
and released back to their families for burial. I’d try to imagine how it must feel for the loved ones who’d be greeting the aircraft when it arrived back in England.
Faulkner, and the guys he served with in B Squadron, had been working hard in the centre of Basra, operating from a remote building that was constantly being battered by insurgents. While we were getting hardly any action at all, our brothers in B Squadron were enduring a pretty hard time at the hands of the Iraqis.
It was Danny who told me the bad news.
Faulkner, while dodging stray bullets and continuous
incoming
mortar rounds in the centre of Basra, had found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. While diving for cover from incoming shells landing all around him, he exposed himself at just the wrong time to the full blast of a landing mortar. He’d been blown up. I thought I was being told my old pal had been killed. Panicking, I fell to the ground, not wanting to hear another word. How had this happened? I’d barely seen him throughout our time in Iraq. And now I’d lost him. Danny picked me up and told me he was still alive. He was still alive! ‘But you can’t see him, he’s being flown home.’
Faulkner had taken a lot of the blast to his front. The damage to his stomach was serious and he was sent out of the country on a medical flight extremely quickly, eventually waking up in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. Poor Faulkner had a long road to recovery and his fighting days were put behind him. He has some magnificent scars from that blast but when I consider how close he came to death – possibly less than a foot away – I think he’ll accept those scars as a lucky escape. Almost twelve months later, he was back on duty in London with the ceremonial regiment.
On the Friday night, 1 Troop headed to Pizza Hut to enjoy a collective bite to eat and a milkshake or two. Mr Olver footed the
bill and it was a chance for us all to chill out a little in the company of each other. It was good fun and much needed after the news about Faulkner. Gibbo presented the idea that we should have 1 Troop T-shirts made to remember our time together in southern Iraq. It was a great idea and everyone agreed, but what followed was an hour-long debate about what the T-shirts should have printed on them.
The biggest debate was over what nicknames we each were going to have on the reverse of the shirt. Gibbo insisted that the names should be chosen collectively by the troop for each man, which was a great chance to really throw around some
good-quality
banter.
Gibbo was handed ‘Mr Burns’ in reference to him looking like the
Simpsons
character. He took it well. Hodges was given ‘Token’: he was the only black guy in the troop. Again, he received this well. Danny got ‘Hollywood Dan’ because of the relatively calm and cool way he operated as a soldier and Scoffy was
affectionately
allowed to retain ‘Scoffy’. I was handed the title ‘Camp Freddy’. I think he was originally some East End gangster back in the day, but I was very happy with it – it could have been much worse. The final name to be decided was quite an event.
Mr Olver wanted to have the word ‘Boss’ printed on the back of his T-shirt, but Gibbo outright refused to allow it. Olver’s second offering was to have ‘Troopy’ but again this was overruled.
‘What you should go for, sir, is “Glass Eye”!’ said Scoffy with enthusiasm.
‘Really?’ returned Mr Olver with interest.
‘Yeah… as in the “All-Seeing Eye” doesn’t miss a trick and is in complete control of all that’s going on around him.’
Scoffy was doing well, as were we all, to keep a straight face. Danny and Gibbo backed him up and told him it was a great idea.
‘That’s perfect, guys. Thank you so much.’
To this day I still chuckle, but feel a little sorry for Olver because he was genuinely delighted with what Scoffy and the rest of us had insisted he adopted as a nickname. The reality was that ‘Glass Eye’ was in no way any relation to him being a great leader and a man who didn’t miss a trick. In fact, it was totally the opposite. It was in reference to the saying ‘to make a glass eye cry’, used to describe something that is either very boring or incredibly unexciting. A little harsh really – deep down Mr Olver wasn’t that bad at all – but right then, he had become the butt of the joke and astonishingly hadn’t even realised. The boys were in creases for days.
One of the final notable points of our week-long rest in Basra was finding out when exactly we’d be returning to the UK to our loved ones for our two weeks of rest and recuperation: 2 August. I immediately began to make plans for Thom and me.
13
15 June 2007
Basra
Twenty-five years ago, the Falkland Islands were liberated. White flags flew over Stanley, victory belonged to us! I’ve just watched a programme on BFBS showing the
commemorations
taking place in the South Atlantic, UK and Germany. It’s inspiring to be out here and able to see the veterans from twenty-five years ago, which in my opinion was the greatest victory in our recent past. Very important to remember the 255 lives that were lost though. Tomorrow is the Trooping of the Colour back in London and we’ve been invited to watch the event on TV with the Irish Guards at their camp in the middle of the COB. Apparently they’re giving us two cans of lager each too… I can’t even remember the last time I had a drink. Well, I do… It was the night before leaving the UK, which seems like a lifetime ago.
I can’t stop thinking about how different my life is now from last year’s Trooping when I was turning out the troop leader. Incredible!
16 June 2007
Basra
Our BBQ and drinks with the Irish Guards was cancelled due to them having a fatality in their battle group late last night. A soldier from the Royal Tank Regiment died when his vehicle, a Warrior, overturned, causing him to drown in his driver’s cab. It’s dreadful news and it’s really shook my inner nerves. I’m a driver in an armoured vehicle… It could easily happen to me.
Tomorrow some general is walking around our camp so we’ve been really busy making the place look nice. Ridiculous! We’re supposed to be at war. If he asks me what I think, I’m going to tell him how pointless I think this whole thing is.
Only one rocket today. It’s been strangely quiet.
We returned to the desert the following morning extremely early, all of us pretty much gutted to be doing so. I, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone, had developed a new fear of drowning in the cab of my armoured vehicle because the utterly rubbish hatches wouldn’t open very easily. The poor lad from the Royal Tank Regiment hadn’t died due to enemy action; he’d died because they’d
accidentally
rolled their Warrior over into a river. He was trapped and nobody could help him. It must have been a horrific ending. I really wanted to get home and never even think about returning to the Middle East again. I wanted to be with Thom.
20 June 2007
Maysan
Not written for a few days. I haven’t stopped. Already
longing
for a rest in Basra with the rockets again. As soon as we got out here on Monday, we jumped into our vehicles and participated in an FOB move. This was an outrageous 35 km,
which took 6.5 hours. And, shockingly, our Scimitar broke down 10 km in. This is the third time my CVRT has broken down out here and we’re pretty typical of a lot of the battle group. They’re just so unreliable and completely not suitable for this dusty desert terrain. When we got to the new FOB, me and Shagger had to go to the REME and work on our broken wagon. This took five hours and included stripping all the top armour, stripping the fittings that held the fan and generator belts, identifying the problem, which turned out to be a coolant flow one, and then putting everything back together again. It’s a FUCKING JOKE! We were done for about 21.30. Long day! But not to bed yet…
I then went on stag for an hour and a half, finally slept for about two hours, then was awoken and put back on stag for another hour. After all this, another FOB move. The move was another 30 km and took seven hours to complete. Six hours in, just as I was about to black out in the intense heat in my driver’s cab, Scoffy swapped places with me and took the controls for the last hour. I was about to become seriously ill, ill enough to be flown out of the desert, if I stayed in that cab any longer. Scoffy measured the temperature at 61 degrees in my driver’s seat.
Finally, at the new FOB location we were able to rest for some hours after the endless running around of the previous forty-eight. I’ve had eight hours’ sleep in two whole days!
I’ve got burns all up my arm from the engine wall that runs next to my driver’s. They’re really painful! I might go see a medic about them.
The reality and harshness of desert life was soon returned to us after our week-long break in Basra. The constant moving around the vast open space of Maysan was taking its toll; vehicles and
soldiers were dropping like flies. The huge operation of keeping us sustained was costing millions. Every time someone collapsed in the heat, a helicopter would have to fly the 150 miles or so to evacuate him. Every time a gear box blew, which was quite
regularly
in those conditions, one would have to be carried beneath another helicopter and flown out to our location. Every three to four days a Herc would have to resupply us with water and rations just so we could survive. What was the benefit? I really struggled to put into words what we were actually achieving out there in Maysan. We hadn’t spotted a single person
carrying
anything they shouldn’t have been. Our jaunt to the Iranian border, although a little interesting, failed to achieve anything of any real importance. Rather soon, right across the spectrum of rank, the men began to question why we were being put through such harsh conditions.
Things were about to get a whole lot rougher for us in the final weeks before our R&R break back in the UK.
23 June 2007
Maysan
A SQN have been handed a tasking: Op Octavia.
Octavia is a large convoy heading up to us from Basra. We’ve been tasked to greet it about ten miles away and escort it in to our FOB. There’s a lot of worry something is going to kick off as it approaches. I don’t feel right about it at all. Yesterday we’d been mortared again by some unknown group who’d disappeared sharpish. Olver has moved the troop around and me, Scoffy and Shagger are now the lead call sign for this operation. The drama with being lead call sign is that we’ll be greeted by any IEDs that are placed on the route. Scoffy isn’t happy about this and he’s told Olver just what he thinks of
him. With Scoffy being so open about his fears, I have to say he’s made me more panicky than normal.
The start of the op has been delayed due to them
encountering
a number of planted IEDs on its way which have taken some time to be dealt with.
Later:
Eventually we moved to a location near to where we would be meeting with the convoy, just behind some large mounds and quite out of sight, but news came through on the radio that the convoy was being attacked by mortar fire and was delayed once again. Two hours later we moved out on to the road,
operationally
named ‘Falkland’, and slowly crawled along. My eyes were searching every inch of road in front of me for disturbed ground. When we got to a bridge crossing a large river, we moved right up close to some civilians who were also crossing the bridge. We know insurgents won’t kill civilians to get at us.
Once over, Shagger, Scoffy and I carried on our slow crawl along Falkland and finally came to a halt at a small roundabout. The last thing we now needed was yet another delay. We were completely exposed. And guess what? The convoy had struck a roadside bomb which had caused casualties who now needed to be air evacuated off the ground and back to Basra. This kept us waiting at the roundabout for about an hour. My arse was twitching throughout! How many problems does one convoy need? After what seemed like an eternity, finally Octavia arrived and with Shagger in command, Scoffy on the gun and me in the driver’s seat, we led the biggest convoy in the whole of Iraq home to our FOB in the middle of the desert. I would rather have been anywhere else on the entire planet than at the front of that convoy which had been battered since leaving
Basra twenty-four hours before. I’m holding it as one of the most stressful days ever. The convoy is due to return to Basra tonight having delivered the various pieces of equipment we need out here, including an armoured petrol tanker to fuel us for the next few weeks. Poor Shagger is the lead call sign again, but me and Scoffy are now back working with Danny in the much more pleasant vehicle of a WMIK. Danny is FACing [forward air controlling] the mission so he’ll call in air support from fighter jets if the convoy, or us, comes under any attack. It’s a pretty cool job.
Once Octavia was out of the way, everyone thought that we’d just return to our normal boring lifestyle of desert existence … but in the days that would follow, Danny, Scoffy and I would find ourselves pulled together, faced with the reality of how delicate life truly is.
26 June 2007
Maysan
Today 1 Troop had a slight lie-in. Danny, who is acting as the corporal of horse due to Gibbo falling unwell and having to return to Basra, left us to carry out some menial troop tasks while he pottered around the FOB on various errands. At about lunchtime, a runner from HQ came over to tell us to pack our things away as we’d been given a tasking. Danny returned and told us all what was going on. Some intel had been received from the brigade that insurgents were planning to attack us later tonight with rockets. So as a result, a few of us have been on patrols in and around our FOB location. I’m on one now actually. We’re sat looking over an area from a piece of cover. Nothing exciting has happened and, to be honest, nothing exciting will, I’m sure.
Later:
As I put my pen down earlier, a call came over the radio that there had been an RTA [road traffic accident] involving a vehicle from within our battle group at a location not too far away from where we’d been observing under cover. We raced to the scene and the three of us rushed off our WMIK to help with the casualties. We were the first soldiers on scene. What greeted us was sheer devastation. A WMIK had flipped and rolled off the side of a road and everyone on board was
seriously
hurt. There was also an Iraqi interpreter travelling on board who I could tell immediately was dead. I checked for a pulse but it was completely pointless as his head had been squashed between the vehicle rolling over him and the desert floor. His brains had come out of the major damage to his head. I covered him over with some sheeting. It was the first dead person and major trauma I’d ever seen in my life.
Scoffy and Danny had begun treating the other crew members, during which some more battle group call signs arrived. The real medics came and took over and we crewed our vehicle, giving cover to the medics as they gave their treatment. About forty or so minutes later, a helicopter came in and took the injured soldiers away, but left behind the dead Iraqi due to there being no room on board and him being already dead.
He was then taken back to our FOB location and placed in the field ambulance overnight. He’s in there right now, about fifty metres away from where I’m writing this.
The events of that day will stay with me forever. Incredibly, the three of us instinctively knew what we had to do to save the lives of the three crew members. Two of them were T1 (priority one) with spinal and neck injuries; the other was a T2 (priority two) with what looked like a broken arm and other superficial
injuries. The poor Iraqi interpreter had died instantly when the vehicle rolled; he wasn’t wearing a seat belt or a helmet and found himself squashed between the weight of the vehicle and the tough rocky floor of the desert. The sight and the smell were beyond words. Incredibly, once the medics arrived from the FOB and while we provided security from our vehicle, closing the road either side of the incident, the three of us pulled together by having a little laugh and a joke about life while the sun went down and the helicopter arrived. Danny really came into his own where the well-being of the men under his command was concerned. He knew that the sight of the dead man had knocked me, and he was able to distract me and Scoffy from what we’d just witnessed. He rustled around in his rucksack and set up his iPod and speakers and the three of us listened to Elvis Presley while the three seriously injured guys were evacuated back to Basra and the dead interpreter’s body was scraped off the floor and bagged up before being placed in the back of a wagon and taken to the FOB. I couldn’t help but think how easily the whole thing might have been prevented. It turned out in the days that followed that the tyres of the Land Rover WMIK were under-inflated and it was probably that which caused the vehicle to roll off the road. Also, we all knew that if the guy had been seat-belted and simply wearing a helmet, he would have likely survived. The tragedy could have been avoided. It was a tough pill to swallow.
Worse, in the hours that followed, we became aware that they’d got the identity of the dead Iraqi wrong, causing the wrong next of kin to be informed of his death. It just didn’t seem to me that anybody had shown much respect to this poor guy who’d bravely volunteered as an interpreter for the British Army and had now paid the ultimate price. They stuck him in the back of a wagon overnight instead of flying his body back to Basra, where it should have been tidied up with respect before being released
back to his family. What’s sadder yet is that I don’t even know his name. I’d like to have known more about him.
As things would go, the death of the interpreter and the
serious
injuries of the soldiers in the crash were some of the last nails in the coffin, sealing the fate of our existence in the desert. A decision was made back in London that our ‘aggressive camping’ in the desert must come to an end. They were pulling us out. When the announcement was made by our squadron leader that our role in the desert was going to soon be over, 1 Troop was back in Basra enjoying some downtime after our turbulent stretch in the desert.
Scoffy, Danny and I were put on trauma management once back in the COB, after our recent experiences in the north. We had to sit with a padre and talk about what had happened. I thought the whole thing was pretty pointless. I considered how cold I’d become. Yes, what had happened was awful, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but I had totally accepted that the government had put us fully in this situation… and what could we really expect? It was a very tough game we’d all chosen to play. This was what being a soldier was all about. We’d pause with respect, but ultimately we had to continue.
