Exit wound

Everyone wanted to lob the military equivalent of a Porsche at the enemy. There was a list, and everybody put their name up. When it was your turn, it was your turn, whether you were an eighteen-year-old rifleman or a forty-eight-year-old colonel. If there was nothing between you and a target up to 2,500 metres away, it kicked off and flew line-of-sight, with pinpoint accuracy. If you had a moving target, say a car, you could select top attack mode and the missile went up into the air, climbing 150 metres before striking down to penetrate the roof – just as it would do to a tank, hitting it at the point of least armour protection.

Pincombe took a mouthful of Stella. ‘He got up onto the wall, took aim, and was just about to kick it off when…’ He supplied the impact site with his finger. ‘Taliban round, straight through the launch unit and into his nut. Simple as that.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and came out with the predictable, ‘At least he died the way he would have wanted.’

No, Tenny. I bet you didn’t, mate.

A photographer walked past and took a couple of shots. All he got of me was the back of my head.

A bell tolled. Shoppers stopped and nodded at the drinkers. They all knew whose funeral it was. The local media had made it a big deal. I doubted a rifleman would be getting the same attention, or his local cathedral.

I turned away as another flash kicked off. ‘I’ve got to go and meet up with a mate before we go in. See you there, yeah?’

‘You going to the wake?’

‘Nah, haven’t got time. Besides, I’m driving.’

The bit afterwards was what I hated most. That was when the storytelling started. Everyone would swap memories of Tenny’s awesome talent with anything from a PlayStation to forty-kilo dumbbells – just how he would have wanted it – but also of his courage and compassion, which he would have hated. Then, at round about the five-pint mark, everyone would start admitting to each other how shit their lives really were. Divorces, child support, mortgages… and a longing to return to the days when no one gave a fuck, except about each other.

Graham Pincombe went back to his beer, and I still couldn’t place him. I walked down the hill, took a left and paralleled the main road to avoid any more pubs. I followed the line of guys, wives, friends and everybody else Tenny had collected over the years snaking along the pedestrian walkway towards the cathedral.

11

I was early, but I could already see that by the time Squaddies Reunited rolled out of the pubs and got themselves up the hill it was going to be standing room only. Lots of guys were in number-twos, their best dress. Boots and medals gleamed around me. Off to one side, I spotted a bugler blowing nervously into his mouthpiece to keep his lips up to the mark. It was a huge responsibility, playing the Last Post. If you fucked up, it was the only memory people took away with them.

‘Oi, lard-arse…’

I spun round. ‘Pikey, mate – how’s it going?’ I had to keep my voice down to control how happy I was to see him.

Pikey had joined the battalion back in the late seventies, the same time as me. We were both scabby seventeen-year-old riflemen. He was South African and, I soon discovered, a total nightmare. For the first six months I couldn’t even understand what he said. All I knew was that every time I went down town with him, I woke up the next day with a hangover and black eyes.

For this lad, fighting was recreation. Provoking a brawl and getting filled in was his equivalent of going to the pictures. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing now. One, he was still in the army, and two, it was now Major Pikey. He had more medals hanging off his chest than a Soviet general on May Day. And he still looked as fit as a butcher’s dog, the fucker.

I grinned. ‘Should I say “sir”? Well done, mate!’

A group of senior officers filed past. Any rank above full colonel confused me. I’d never understood all that scrambled egg even when I was in. The American system of one to five stars was easier on the brain.

Pikey whispered, ‘It’s a fucking nightmare.’

I thought he was talking about the promotion.

‘I’m on rear party. I’m the lad who has to go and give the families the bad news. I’ve got four kids myself and two of them are older than the last two we buried.’

A couple of the scrambled-egg brigade nodded at him and he nodded back. ‘I go and break it to them but they’re the ones making me cups of tea. Even reading the eulogies, I start to crack up, man. Just send me back out there, I can’t hack all this. My youngest, the girl, every time the mobile rings she flinches. She thinks it’s someone else in the battalion who’s got zapped.’

My eyes followed the officers as they took their reserved seats in the first three rows on the left. Tenny’s family filled the opposite side of the aisle. Near the back of the church, a guy who’d just come in removed his raincoat to reveal an immaculate dark grey suit and well-pressed shirt. Pikey had also seen him – and noticed me noticing. ‘Who’s he?’