Rain (11 page)

Tom closed the bluey, leaned back in the canvas chair and took a draw of coffee. He rubbed his eyes and started another letter.

The C Squadron Troop Leaders’ Tent aka ‘The Playboy Mansion’

Dear Will,

Mate, am I jealous of you! I was gutted to miss you in Bastion. Oh well. We moved up to BG(NE) the day before you must have come off the ground. Anyway, I hope
POTL
is
gleaming
, mate; argh I hate writing that – it makes me green with envy.

So anyway I’ve managed to make it through a month. It’s been pretty weird, to be honest. The
BG
has had its fair share of contacts, especially in the north of the
AO
, but we’ve been slightly out of it in this barking-mad town called Shah Kalay. You won’t have heard of it; it’s in the arse end of nowhere. This place was seriously spooky. It was riddled with IEDs and was controlled by this militia who we couldn’t trust further than we could have thrown them. We were there for five days, and the only thing that we achieved was getting one of the militia blown up, dead. Proper fucked, mate. Quad amp, and most of his head as well; he was basically just a slug. Good look. And then we bounced back down to Bastion and started taking over the CVR(T)s which amazingly enough are in quite good order. It’s good to be back with them, and the boys are really excited about taking them up north, as there’s loads of open ground to the flanks of the town where we’ll be able to cut about. Fingers crossed anyway. But you know what this place is like. We’ll probably get issued Uncle Sam costumes tomorrow and get sent to Islamabad to march around Mullah Omar’s house on stilts.

Back up north in two nights’ time, the whole squadron – 25 ancient vehicles bimbling through forty miles of bandido country. Ooooh that sounds like fun. If we get there this side of Christmas I’ll be amazed.

Mate, I can’t wait to hear all your news. Also if there are any tips at all you remember then I am all ears! Thanks so much for the parcel – the salami and biltong went down a treat, as did the
Beano.
Old skool but I like it!

Already looking forward to pints when back,

TC

Tom got up from the desk, a wooden board perched on two stacks of old
Javelin
tubes, and got ready to go over to the post office. Clive, Scott, Henry and an engineer mate of Henry’s didn’t look up from their poker game. The tent was their home in Bastion. It had been lived in since 2006 and was full of kit: new, old, borrowed, stolen, sent out by friends, inherited from outgoing mates. A huge sofa had been constructed out of a
Hesco
frame upholstered luxuriously with camp-bed mattresses, and Jason lay on this, tongue out in earnest battle with the latest Dan Brown novel. A TV stood, altar-like, on another platform of Javelin tubes in front of the sofa. The walls of the tent were lined with posters of topless girls, psychedelic drapes, a Union Flag, a rainbow flag and a CND flag. A couple of lamps were fitted with red bulbs, making the tent look like a dive bar in Vietnam.

Tom loved it; in the middle of the order and rigidity of Bastion the tent shone as a beacon of nonconformity. He pulled on ironed trousers and shirt, adjusted his beret in the shaving mirror hung by his bed and went out into the night air. It was starting to get a bit colder now; he’d probably start wearing his jersey at nights soon.

He passed a few of the boys on their way from the Naafi and then chatted for a moment with Miller and GV, just back from the gym. The last tent was the senior NCOs’. He walked into the porch and hung back to look for a moment
through the mosquito netting at the scene within. It was a different universe from the officers’ tent. Sergeant Williams stood at an ironing board in tiny Y-fronts, ironing a shirt as if his life depended on it, biceps straining down onto the board as if trying to rip open the regimental crest tattoo on his arm. Where Tom’s tent was all soft and mellow, here a thin bare fluorescent tube threw its light into every corner. Brennan, Trueman and two other sergeants sat on rigid plastic chairs in front of a television, watching the news on
BFBS
, each drinking a steaming brew. Above Brennan’s bed were paintings that his daughter had sent out, and above Trueman’s was an Oldham Athletic flag and a Grateful Dead poster. Tom walked in.

Trueman greeted him: ‘All right, sir, how’s tricks? How much money you lost in that poker game? If you’ve come to borrow some then no can do.’

‘No, Sergeant Trueman, those other maniacs are doing that. I’ve been writing some letters. Off to the post office now. You guys have any letters that I can take?’

‘Nah, cheers though, sir,’ said Brennan. ‘That’s kind of you. Hang about, what’s this?’ He looked at the television, and they all watched the story, about a mother who had been driven to committing suicide along with her disabled daughter after enduring years of bullying torment by a gang of thugs on their council estate. Apparently the police had ignored all her complaints and calls for help. Pictures flashed up of the woman and her daughter, and the car that they had gassed themselves in. Tom sensed something come over the tent. Normally stories in the news attracted nothing but mild shrugs from the soldiers, who tended to view everyone else’s sufferings as child’s play compared to what they were going through in Afghan. But this was different; Tom could see Trueman and Brennan looking shocked at the news.

‘Fucking cunts. CUNTS!’ Brennan broke the silence and threw his mug onto the floor, where it smashed and sprayed coffee up the wall of the tent. ‘How fucking DARE those pikey scum. If I got my hands on any of those fucking cunt cowards I’d rip their fucking cocks off and shove them down their fucking throats.’

He was screaming, red-faced and spitting at the TV, and Tom watched nervously.

Brennan steadied himself. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but it’s just fucking unacceptable. How are we meant to stand here and watch our fucking country be taken to the dogs by these feral little pieces of shit?’ He was whispering his words at the end, grasping the reality that he was unable to look after two little girls and a wife five thousand miles away.

Tom looked at him, unblinking, and said softly, ‘I know, Sergeant Major, I know, I know. It’s not right.’ At that moment he felt nothing but Brennan’s anger, an anger even worse than he had felt in the weeks before deploying. Tom wanted to destroy those half-men and felt as pure a rage against them as he had at anything before in his life. But the rage was shackled to an impotence that made it futile. Without another word he smiled sympathetically at Brennan, who was now slumped back in his chair and distractedly watching the next news item, went to go and pat him on the back, hovered his palm over him, but didn’t. He withdrew his hand, left the tent and walked the lonely dark kilometre to the post office.

The next two days were a whirlwind as the squadron prepared to move north. While Frenchie and the troop leaders pored over maps and aerial photographs of the route, planning and counter-planning, developing actions on, locating key vulnerable points and areas of high threat, Brennan masterminded the physical preparation of the wagons. Four troops’ worth of Scimitars plus an SHQ of four vehicles were parked up in immaculate rows on the Bastion football pitch with just a metre between them so that munitions and supplies could be passed easily from vehicle to vehicle. The boys swarmed over the wagons like bees on honeycomb.

All the bomb racks were filled, chains of lads passing ammo clips into turrets. They took mostly high-explosive as opposed to armour-piercing shells.
HE
rounds, with their bright yellow warheads, were designed to explode upon impact; if they missed the target they would probably still kill with shrapnel, whereas AP rounds would, if off target, just drive into whatever they ended up hitting. Boxes of 7.62 for the GPMGs were stuffed into every available turret space.
Schmoolies
, grenade boxes, smoke-grenade boxes, bin bags full of cyalumes and
Claymore
mines all found accommodation in nooks and crannies. Javelin tubes were strapped to the back of the wagons.

Brennan was everywhere, encouraging and ticking off in equal measure. ‘Come on, fellas,’ he shouted. ‘I want more ammo. There’s shedloads here, and I promise you, you can never have enough. We are going to take it all up with us, so
let’s start finding some extra fucking space for it. If you hit an IED you’re going to be fucked anyway in these deathtraps, so you might as well make the wagon into an atom bomb and make sure you die and not end up in the Paralympics. If you want to be one-limb Jim or Billy the stump then crack on, but don’t come crying to me when it happens. No half-measures.’ The younger boys blanched at this. ‘Come on, fellas; lighten up. If you can’t laugh what can you do?’ he would say as he bounced from wagon to wagon.

In the afternoon Frenchie took Henry, whose troop was going to lead the column north, on a helicopter recce of the route. Afterwards Henry came to see Tom, who was with his boys as they sat around a wagon, chatting about nothing in particular and smoking. Tom was on the turret, quietly cleaning his rifle and listening to Trueman hold court, reeling off impersonation after impersonation or regaling them with stories of previous tours. The boys were all cackling away, in particular GV, whose high-pitched almost girlish laugh completely belied his barrel chest, his white teeth flashing smiles. Henry bounded up to the wagon.

‘Hi, mate; how was the flight?’ asked Tom.

‘Great, pal, really great. That’s the way to travel. A bit gutting when you realize that we covered the route in twenty minutes when it’s going to take about twenty-four hours tomorrow, but oh well.’

‘What about
VPs
? What’s the going like?’

‘Like the maps really, mate. Pretty flat, a few wadis with steep sides but nothing the wagons won’t handle. The only real drama is that the moment we break off
Highway One
it’s immediately obvious we’re going up to Loy Kabir, so any Talib worth his salt will start guessing where to put the IEDs.

‘We’ll be able to cut about off the main tracks pretty easily, but there’s one or two places where we’re going to be
channelled. But we should be all right. The weird thing is, there’s this massive town about two thirds into it that isn’t on any of the maps. I tell you, mate, massive. Just about five miles by five miles of compounds sprawling over the area.’

‘Can we not just skirt around it?’

‘That’s the thing: no one’s gone through it in the last three years, so, by extension, Frenchie thinks no one’s going to have IED’d it. Everyone who’s skirted around it on the obvious bypass tracks has been smashed. You can see the craters of previous hits from the air.’

‘Well, chum –’ Tom grinned as he punched Henry on the shoulder ‘– just as long as you don’t get us lost we’ll be fine. Good luck with that one; I can’t wait. Every time it all gets a bit too much I’ll just think of you up front flapping about getting lost with Frenchie breathing down the radio.’

‘Thanks, mate. It’s going to be a nightmare trying to lead this thread of vehicles through the route, especially at night, and especially through that sodding town. And you
jack
bastards are going to be monging it in your wagons just following the previous vehicle. You lucky fuckers.’

‘No probs, mucker; any time.’

That night in the tent they huddled round Clive’s laptop to watch
Black Hawk Down
. They were all able to quote from it verbatim, and they found it amusing that even here they still watched war films. They were asleep by ten, their minds able now to switch off at will, knowing the next few days were liable to be completely sleepless.

The next morning the squadron mustered, and Frenchie walked around the wagons, inspecting kit, climbing into turrets, sniffing round like a search dog. Brennan, the SQMS and the
tiffy
trooped after him, and as the party came to each troop the troop leader and sergeant followed nervously on, hoping the wagons would pass Frenchie’s high standards. He
never cared much about cleanliness, a losing battle in Afghanistan, but if any moving part hadn’t been oiled to within an inch of its life he would get very angry. He clambered over the wagons, jumping into the gunners’ seats to test the smoothness of the elevation and traverse of the Rardens, making sure the GPMGs were dripping with oil, checking the running gear of the tracks to see that oil levels were correct and burrowing into the engines, twanging the generator belts for tautness.

After an hour he jumped off the final wagon, his coveralls filthy, and took them off to reveal his immaculate combats. He hated getting these dirty. Ever fastidious, he took his beret off, ran a comb several times back through his hair and then beamed at Brennan. ‘Well, Sergeant Major; it looks like half of NATO’s entire stockpile of ammunition is on these wagons. Bloody good job; very well done indeed. We’re quite a force to be reckoned with, aren’t we?’

‘Too right, sir. Let’s just say it’s going to be a brave bastard who decides to mess with us on the way up.’

They held the
O Group
for the move. It was nothing that they hadn’t talked through informally over the past week, and when Tom in turn delivered the orders to 3 Troop he didn’t have to refer to his notes at all. As he handed over to Trueman for the casevac plan and
CSS
part of the orders he looked at the scene in front of him. The boys were sitting around in canvas chairs, shirts off, dog tags clinking softly on their chests in the steady warm breeze. They had lost their little rolls of puppy fat and were lean and hungry-looking, and the pumped-up look in their eyes rubbed off on him. He could tell they were excited about the move through the big town.

Frenchie thought that while they would avoid IEDs on this route, the move would inevitably generate a big contact
from the local Taliban, who would feel impelled, almost out of pride, to put up a performance as twenty wagons trundled through their backyard. Tom noticed Miller and Davenport’s contrasting reactions: Miller calmly taking in every word, Davenport a bundle of nervous energy, his foot tapping the ground and his head bobbing up and down as though he was listening to music. They were in the zone.
Christ!
Tom thought.
I’m in the zone too
.

In the afternoon everyone lined up in their crews on the football pitch, and Jason took them through a dozen scenarios, from the lead wagon hitting an IED, to the centre wagon hitting one, to a strike on the rear one, to a complex ambush being thrown at them with three wagons taken out in one hit. They rehearsed what would happen in a sustained contact from the left, from the right, from the rear, actions on a single
shoot and scoot
from a lone gunman. They rehearsed what would happen if Frenchie was killed, how they would move in mist or fog, bunching much tighter together. The midday sun beat down, but they were used to it now.

At one point soldiers from another unit walked past and sniggered at the sight of the squadron moving in their strange bundles of three. Brennan predictably blew up. Striding towards them so quickly that they started to run, he screamed after them, ‘Right, you lippy cunts can fuck off. We’re doing this not to look good, but so we don’t end up with our fucking legs blown off. You fucking REMFs wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you? You ballbags, get the fuck out of my sight before I rip your eyes out.’ The fat rear-echelon soldiers scurried off as fast as their unworn boots would take them to a chorus of jeers and abuse, and Brennan said to Jason, ‘Sorry, sir; please carry on.’

Just at the point where Tom could tell the boys were about
to lose interest, Frenchie called a halt; time was moving quickly. They rolled out at midnight, and it was 1700 now. Time for scoff, and then back to the wagons for last-minute tweaks until they struck out. He dismissed the boys and they ran to the scoff house.

They stuffed themselves with food as Brennan had told them all to, in case there was a major drama on the move and they found themselves on the ground and on rations for a week. Plates were piled high with curry and rice, stew and chips. Jason had the fullest plate and was about to further engorge himself with a chicken leg like a Roman emperor when he sniffed it, pulled a face and put it back down. ‘Something’s definitely not right with that.’

‘I thought you were the human dustbin: eat anything animal, vegetable, mineral or metal?’ said Clive.

‘Yeah, not that though. It just smells weird – like off. The rest of it’s all right though.’ He started chomping through the rest of his plate.

Tom stopped eating and seemed to go green. He picked up the chicken on Jason’s plate and held it up to his nose.

‘You’re right, mate. It reeks. And I’ve just eaten one of those bastards. I thought it tasted weird.’ He prodded the mangled remains of the chicken leg on his own plate, pink ripped flesh hanging off it and watery fat beneath.

They stopped eating and looked at him. They all knew what happened when they got ill on tour: you were out for five days minimum, of no use to man or beast. To get ill on a big move like this one was going to be dreadful.

Clive chuckled. ‘Well, mate, glad I’m not in your wagon. I don’t envy Dusty.’ He spotted Miller on another table. ‘Hey, Dusty, hope you’ve got some Immodium on your wagon, cos I thing your boss is going to be shitting for Britain after that chicken he’s just eaten.’

Miller shouted back to Tom, ‘Oh cheers, sir; rookie error. You ain’t heard the rumours about them chicken legs, did you? Everyone says they’re a killer.’

Tom clicked his teeth. ‘Bugger off, the lot of you. I’ll be fine. I’ve got a lead-lined stomach anyway.’ He started upon a bowl of apple crumble with studied nonchalance, praying inwardly that he wouldn’t get ill. He glanced at the chicken leg. It looked rancid.

They finished and went back to the tent to pick up their gear. Tom felt sorry to be leaving the civilian comforts of the tent. He would miss the eight nights they’d had here, watching films, playing cards, writing letters home. The last one to leave, he turned out the red lamp and paused for a moment in the dark before running outside with his rucksack to join the others.

At the tank park there was nothing to do but wait. They knew the plan inside out. Leave camp at midnight, head north to Highway One, head east on that for ten kilometres, then leave the road to strike north again and thread their way up the seventy kilometres to Loy Kabir. Try not to hit any IEDs en route. All going well they’d be there by dusk the next day. All going badly it could turn into an epic.

Frenchie’s philosophy on military operations was simple: plans either work perfectly or not at all. If one tiny thing goes wrong, he held, everything else unravels until what eventually happens bears no resemblance to anything that has been planned or even conceived of before the operation. All or nothing. It was vital to have a plan, he maintained, as it was useful, when things went awry, to be able to use a previous template to judge progress and inform possible decisions, but it was equally important to be able to depart from it without pride or sentimentality. That was why he spent more
time on rehearsals than he did on orders. They constantly rehearsed and talked through every possible scenario or weird mutation of a plan, and he rammed his philosophy into the troop leaders as they gathered around his wagon for a last pep talk.

‘Here we go, fellas. Henry, best of luck. Whatever you do, don’t get us lost, all right? No pressure! Remember, lads: if one thing goes wrong here, the plan’s going to disappear. But don’t worry about that. Have faith. You’ve all got the grammar and vocab of ops by now. When things start to go wrong just apply them to the new situation, and you’ll be OK. Forget the basics, and we’re screwed. And at least we’re not working with any Afghan muppets this time. Hopefully next time I see your ugly mugs this close will be in Loy Kabir. Here’s hoping anyway. Right, back to your troops. Best of luck. And keep
VP
slick, whatever you do.’

By 2300 everyone was set in the wagons, snatching some sleep or lost in their own time-passing rituals. Davenport was fast asleep in his driver’s seat. Dusty was plugged into his music reading a Bernard Cornwell book by the light of an orange
cyalume
. Tom had checked and triple-checked all the weapons and radios and had oiled everything inside the turret two times now, so he reached into his side bin and drew out a bluey. He’d write to Cassie. He folded it out, took a pen from his trouser pocket, thought a bit about how to begin, toying with various ways of opening up, and started writing.

Bastion

Dear Cassie,

I hope this finds you very well. I can’t believe I am writing this, stuck in the desert a million miles away. At the moment I am in Camp
Bastion, and we are about to begin a move north to this town called Loy Kabir that we’re working in. I cannot even begin to describe to you what it is like out here. And I don’t mean that in a bad sense at all, but in an all-encompassing sense. It is quite simply the most overwhelming experience of my life. Everything is brought into focus to the sharpest degree. You cover the entire range of the emotional spectrum pretty much every day, from excitement to terror through boredom.

And there’s a lot of boredom. But it doesn’t really matter, as the boys are always there to chat to and get you through the dull times. And the most amazing thing about here is that you do everything against a backdrop of astonishing scenery. The sunrises and sunsets are something else. Like tonight. We had a bright red sunset, and as the sun dropped to the west the full moon rose as its exact mirror in the east. It hung on the horizon even redder than the sun, like some kind of blood orange. It’s now fully back to its normal bright white, almost directly above us now. It feels quite friendly, just next to the good old North Star, our guide for tonight. This one star trillions of light years away which through some random intergalactic chance is our homing beacon. I promise you I haven’t become a space geek in the past few weeks. But the sky is amazing out here, so much more intense that anything I have seen before.

I think about you a lot, Cassie. I hope we can still be friends. I think it’s fair to say that I became a bit of a prat when I joined the army, a real puritan in many ways. The army gives you the opportunity to seize the moral high ground in virtually every situation, so that you look down on people and often actively despise them just because they haven’t decided to join the army. It is not a good look, and I am not proud of it. When I get back I promise I won’t be so bad. It would be great to see you when I get back on R & R. I’ll let you know when it is asap.

Better go now – we roll out of here in about half an hour and my gunner is telling me it’s my turn to make the brews on the little kettle we have inside the turret. What an impertinent wretch. I could spend
hours trying to close this letter, so I’ll just take the easy way out and say that I am thinking of you, with love,

Tom