War Torn

DAVE’S HEAD FELT LIKE A WAR ZONE. HE KNEW HE’D FAILED TO follow his own instructions and drink enough water today. He’d spent the morning shovelling admin shit and drawing up rotas. By lunchtime the names and numbers looked like he was squinting at them through a heat haze, the ops room was an oven and he was dripping with sweat just leaning against the wall under a large piece of paper on which someone had written: Living The Dream??? And now here was Finn boasting about having sex with one of the civilians. However bad your headache, Billy Finn was guaranteed to make it worse.Dave had to stay alert.The Helmand River snaked through the centre of the Green Zone like an artery. They drove past orchards crisscrossed by irrigation ditches, collections of houses that were almost villages, lonely compounds with goats outside them, small towns walled like fortresses, fields, woodland, high crops, jungle.The two women interpreters had wrung information out of the detainees about a Taliban stronghold. The detainees couldn’t or wouldn’t pinpoint the compound, but they’d said enough to confirm the outgoing Officer Commanding’s suspicions.So now the convoy was putting his theory to the test. Dave wasn’t pleased that they’d been sent with less than a full platoon. He’d told CSM Kila he didn’t feel at all happy about crossing this part of the Green Zone with so few men. Kila had agreed but Major Willingham had refused to revise his plans.‘Don’t get out,’ Kila said. ‘You’ve not got the manpower. Whatever happens, just keep going.’‘Why can’t we take more men and do a proper foot patrol?’‘Too busy guarding the FOB and protecting Topaz fucking Zero and his mates.’Topaz Zero was Martyn Robertson’s call sign. Whenever Kila referred to him, he swore. So did most of the officers. Dave had even overheard Major Willingham muttering incantations under his breath which might have included the words Topaz fucking Zero.‘He should care a bit more about men’s lives and a bit less about his precious fucking oil,’ Kila said.Everyone on board the vehicles was bad-tempered. Sitting in a scalding hot metal box for two hours was no one’s idea of fun, and they knew the chances of getting out in that two hours were slim. They took it in turns to go on top with Jamie, who’d replaced Steve Buckle on the GPMG.The attack was sudden and intense. There were trees on either side of them, and poppy fields beyond. The poppies were taller than a man. They grew so thickly that, even from the air, Dave knew it was virtually impossible to catch sight of anyone moving through the crop. Muzzle flashes sparked up from all sides. The men on top of the vehicles returned rapid fire without any sense of the precise location of their targets.Dave watched tracer rounds whiz past from his seat at the front of the lead Vector. He longed to debus and give the choggies a proper fire fight. Speeding through like this felt too much like running away. But the boss followed orders and kept the convoy going.The river carved its way through the foliage ahead of them. The water gleamed in the sunlight. The landscape opened up on either side of it, filling their perspective with light and space. Then they returned once more to the dense, sunken world of interwoven shadows and raking gunfire.Someone yelled into their mic: ‘Oh, fuck it, no!’It sounded like Sol Kasanita. Sol almost never swore.‘Man down . . .’Man down. The words Dave dreaded. The words that echoed in his worst nightmares.‘Sol?’He couldn’t hide his anguish. Sol Kasanita, built like a rock, solid as a rock, dependable as rock. For an instant Dave stared into a gaping hole where that rock should be.Laughter rang in his ear.‘It’s all right, Sarge!’ Jamie said.‘He was just getting his head down!’Mal’s voice. And more laughter in the background.‘Stop fucking about and get someone else up on top!’ Dave roared, embarrassed by his sudden rush of emotion. ‘What’s going on with you bunch of dickheads? On second thoughts, don’t tell me. Just get on with your jobs. And if I ever hear anyone fucking about with Man Down again I’ll personally remove their balls.’He could see a network of compounds in the distance. The detainees had said that fighters from Iran, Pakistan and the Gulf all trained somewhere close by. But there were also civilians: women, children, old people.The open, arid desert was visible again now. The firing finally petered out as they reached the edge of the Green Zone. Dave kept his eyes fixed on the track ahead of him. The intensity of this attack certainly supported the OC’s theory about the location of the Taliban stronghold. He’d want a strike op next.A few hundred metres ahead, a goat strolled out from a cluster of trees.The driver kept on going. And so did the goat. It ambled along the track towards them.‘Go firm,’ Dave said. ‘I don’t fancy goat in my rations.’The driver stopped.‘What’s up?’ asked the lads in the back.‘Goat hitchhiking,’ Dave said into the mic. An old man ran out of the trees further along the track, waving a stick and shouting.The goat, which had been impervious to the roaring line of Vectors, started at the sight of the stick or the old boy’s spindly legs and cantered towards Dave’s wagon, head back and eyes rolling.Suddenly there was a massive fireball in front of them instead of a goat. The windscreen filled with dust. There was a second ear-splitting explosion. The Vector rocked and then vibrated like a dog shaking water from its coat.‘What the fuck . . .?’A chorus of voices in his ears.But in the front of the Vector there was silence. Dave and his driver contemplated their near escape. Two lives down, Dave thought. The first time, Steve took the hit. Now the goat. How many can I have left?‘Fucking hell,’ the driver said eventually.‘Big one,’ Dave said.‘Yeah . . . but I don’t get it. A goat couldn’t set off an anti-tank mine.’‘Anti-personnel stacked onto an anti-tank, I reckon. Or two.’ Dave’s throat was thick with dust. ‘Apparently the Taliban like to do a bit of stacking.’‘Good thing you told me to stop,’ the driver said.‘I thought I was being kind to a dumb animal.’Their eyes scanned the track, gouged and pitted from the explosion.‘No sign of the old geezer with the knobbly knees and the stick,’ Dave said.‘He’ll be hiding in those trees somewhere.’‘He won’t have been close enough to the blast to get hurt.’ But Dave wasn’t completely sure about that.The boss came on the radio and Dave described what had happened.‘Where’s the old man?’Dave rolled his eyes at the driver. ‘He was a good two hundred metres away.’ He didn’t want to stop and look for him.‘We’ll have to make sure he’s not hurt,’ the boss said.‘They planted the IED, not us.’ Dave didn’t bother to hide his irritation. ‘Maybe his grandson put it there and forgot to tell him. Or maybe he planted it himself and hadn’t told the goat . . .’But he already knew the boss well enough to guess what would come next.‘He’s a local farmer and, um, probably has nothing to do with the, er, insurgents. He may not even speak their language. He could be a casualty and we, um, have a duty of care to him if he’s, er, hurt.’Dave sighed. You could count on Boss Weeks to take the moral high ground.‘Right,’ he said unenthusiastically. ‘Dismount 1 and 2 Sections. Sol Kasanita, you bring 1 Section up here to me, Baker bring 2 Section. Corporal Curtis and 3 Section stay here and cover.’He could hear the men moving reluctantly. It had been a long, hot drive and sausages at the cookhouse in Sin City seemed like a much better idea.‘Move!’ Dave barked. ‘Let’s get it over with.’‘Bit of a problem here, Sarge.’ Sol sounded embarrassed.‘Oh yeah?’‘Finn won’t let me go.’Dave thought of the exploding goat. He was going to explode himself if his men kept on like this.‘Listen, lads . . .!’‘He can’t walk,’ Finn explained cheerfully. ‘He’s going to get into trouble out there.’‘I can manage,’ Sol said.‘You fucking can’t,’ said Finn.‘Did you say he can’t walk?’ Dave repeated slowly.‘Fell down from the top,’ Sol admitted. His voice was miserable.‘Twisted his ankle,’ Jamie said.‘Maybe broken it,’ Finn added.‘It is not fucking broken!’ yelled Sol and there was a momentary silence as everyone remembered again that Sol never swore.Dave said: ‘Try to find a more heroic way to die, Sol. OK, you stay there. I’ll have Finn with the rest of 1 Section. Get moving. Come on, 2 Section, where are you?’He got out and the men joined him. He didn’t press the mic button; he didn’t want the boss to hear what he was about to say next.‘All we’re doing is keeping the boss happy now, lads. Just go up the track looking for a wounded civilian, then through the trees, and we’ll work our way back herringbone. Don’t take too much time or trouble over it. Finn leads with 1 Section, Baker follows with 2 Section and, as Sol’s out, I’ll go behind.’Finn’s watchfulness was so acute that it was almost a sixth sense. When he was around, it was hard to make anyone else point man.‘What are we looking for, Sarge?’ Jamie asked.‘An old geezer. Dead or wounded. He’s got a beard . . .’ He turned to the driver. ‘He did have a beard, didn’t he?’‘They’ve all got fucking beards.’‘OK, beard and knobbly knees. Last seen holding a stick. The boss is worried that he may have gone the same way as his goat.’‘I’ll look for the beard, you look for the knees,’ Jamie told Angus.‘Get your sling clip undone, for Chrissake, Bilaal,’ Dave said to Mal. ‘And two hands on your weapon!’‘Oh, yeah, sorry, Sarge.’Mal wasn’t thick or lazy. Far from it. The sling clip would limit his firing arc and Mal knew that but he just wasn’t thinking. Not enough about soldiering, anyway. He thought about women all day and all night. He was probably standing there fantasizing about Emily the sex grenade right now. But if you could just get him to concentrate, he was good.They moved forward up the track, along the line of trees, up to the site of the explosion. They stared in silence at the scorched earth and shredded foliage.‘There but for the grace of God . . .’‘Could be a few bits of barbecued goat . . .’ Jamie prodded the ground with his foot.‘Let’s hope it’s not barbecued beard.’ Dave led them to the place where the old man had emerged onto the track. They peered between the trees. The soil was sandy, the canopy thick with tangled leaves.Finn plunged in and the others followed.‘OK, swing left and back to the vehicles,’ Dave said. ‘If he’s lying wounded, we should find him.’It felt like another world in here. Cooler. The shade from the overhead leaves was green.Just ahead of Dave and to his right, Angus suddenly stopped. Dave stopped too. It took a moment for him to realize why. Their stillness made the woods seem unnaturally quiet. The trees came to an abrupt end. Ahead of them, walking casually across an open field, along the top of one of the drainage ditches, were four insurgents.Their weapons were slung carelessly over their shoulders. Their sergeant really should have bollocked them big-time. Two were carrying belts of ammo. They must have been firing at us a few minutes ago, and now the contact’s over here they are, walking home in pairs, talking and laughing. Just like us after a contact, Dave thought, experiencing a strange sense of fellowship with the enemy even as he raised his weapon to kill them.He muttered into the mic but did not look around for the others. He took the safety off and watched the insurgents drop, one by one, into the ditch. It was so easy and so quick that he was hardly aware of the sound of his own rifle. He thought someone else, a bit further up the herringbone, had fired too, although he wasn’t sure.He reported back quickly and then silently moved forward, telling Angus, Jamie and Mal, who were nearest, to come too while the others covered from the woods.The field felt uncomfortably exposed. Dave became aware that something was nagging at him. Angus McCall had seen the enemy first but instead of taking immediate action, he’d frozen. It was the shock and rigidity in McCall’s imposing frame which had alerted Dave to the enemy presence. It should have been the sight of Angus raising his weapon. He made a mental note to deal with the problem later.‘Four enemy dead, now searching,’ he muttered into his mic.The men were lying in the drainage ditch, their hair tangled with the undergrowth, their bodies crumpled.‘You take the two at the back,’ Dave instructed Angus.He jumped down into the ditch. The water was thigh-high and smelled rancid. Some of it splashed onto his face. It soaked rapidly through his clothes.One of his dead men was still holding a weapon; the other had dropped his on the bank. Dave took both AK47s and pushed them right out of reach. Jamie swept them up.Angus scrambled down to the other two bodies further along the channel.‘Got an evidence bag?’‘No,’ Angus said miserably. ‘Didn’t think I’d need it.’Dave groaned. ‘Got anything at all to put stuff in?’‘Well . . . my Camelbak, I s’pose.’Dave was just about to yell at him when Mal dragged a couple of evidence bags from his belt kit. ‘Here’s some.’Dave pulled at the first body. He was surprised by how light it was. This man was a lot thinner than any British soldier, Dave thought, as he pressed his knee into the bony back and turned the corpse over.‘Clear.’Jamie Dermott: cool, efficient, focused. Dave liked to work with a man he could rely on.He began a systematic search from the head down. When he reached the feet he found they were bare. He looked in the water and the bank for shoes. There were none. He felt the man’s feet. Still warm. And the soles were hard and leathery as sandals. These were habitually bare feet. The man had been barefoot with an AK47.He turned the body over. Man? He was scarcely more than a boy.He extracted a mobile phone from his pockets and folded papers and some beads which looked as though they might have religious significance. There was a laminated ID card, too, with a photo and indecipherable script. Dave didn’t waste a second examining it. The sound of their rounds would certainly draw the enemy and it was just a matter of time before they came under fire again.The second insurgent had been dragged down into the ditch by the weight of his ammo belt. As Dave pulled up the soaking body, he heard Angus.‘He moved! Christ, he’s fucking alive!’Dave stared along the ditch. ‘Get his weapon away!’Angus had failed to clear the weapons before starting his search. Mal moved rapidly from the bank to swipe the AK47 out of arm’s reach.‘Get on with it!’ Dave said.‘I lifted him and he moved!’ Angus had dropped the body back into the ditch and was now staring at it, his face horrified. The man was covered in blood and showed no apparent signs of life.‘Get on with it!’Angus did not move.Mal raised his SA80 and fired twice at the man’s chest. Blood appeared like a fast-blooming flower. The weapon’s report was followed by silence.Angus remained motionless.‘Now search him!’Dave’s roar finally seemed to wake Angus from his dream. He grabbed the body and started to search it correctly but his face remained blank.Dave watched. His men had done this often enough in training, but searching a real body methodically and professionally – without thinking destructive thoughts about how the man had a mother and maybe a wife and small kids and a bunch of mates he’d been to school with all waiting for him to come home – was something else again.He heard a nearby volley of fire. Their own shots had certainly drawn the enemy, who must now have found the convoy. He wondered how long it would take them to discover that a small group from the Vectors was in an exposed field with the bodies of four of their fighters. And all because of an old geezer with knobbly knees.His second body was bigger and stronger. The man wore more serious kit, solid sandals, and had a Pakistani passport in his pocket. This was not a local, but a professional Taliban fighter.He slipped the passport and personal effects into his evidence bag and, when Angus had finished, they climbed out of the ditch and ran back to the cover of the woods.‘Firing from all sides.’ Boss Weeks’s voice crackled in Dave’s ear. The column of men advanced slowly and quietly through the trees. Dave told the convoy to move forward for them. They remained hidden as they waited for its slow advance. Dave saw the thin, anxious faces of his men, looking for the enemy on all sides. Angus looked up.‘Fucking hell, Sarge . . .’Almost directly above them was a foot. The foot was attached to a thin, brown leg. The leg was attached to a man and the man was attached to a weapon. The weapon was trained on the path of the oncoming convoy.They understood the man’s stillness with one glance. From the rigid position of his head, his neck frozen like a frightened animal’s, they knew that he was unable to disengage his weapon from the branches to aim it at them. He’d turned to stone in the hope they wouldn’t look up.‘McCall, step back to fire,’ Dave said. ‘So you get something a bit more useful than his arse.’Angus had frozen when he had a clear view of four insurgents crossing a field. He’d frozen when he found one of them wasn’t dead. Now Dave wanted to give him another chance but he saw the lad’s face was rigid with alarm. He’d experienced enough death for one day.Finn said: ‘I’ll do it.’He stepped back.The Taliban sniper looked down at them, knowing what was going to happen. Dave stared up into his brown eyes. The man looked back at him and started to speak. He didn’t cry or yell and he showed no fear. He spoke in a strange, soft way, without pleading. It was affecting, more affecting than any cry or shout could have been.There was a flash and the report of a weapon. The man slumped forward.‘Sorry, mate,’ Dave said quietly.A mobile phone fell from the man’s clothes and Jamie caught it neatly. The convoy drew level with them and, under fire, they piled into the back of the first two Vectors.‘Let’s go.’Dave thought about the man in the tree, whose pleas for his life he’d ignored. Technically, it was a legitimate killing: the man’s weapon had been trained on the convoy. He told himself that the man wouldn’t have spared him if their positions had been reversed. All the same, he found himself wishing he had brought him in as a prisoner. He didn’t feel uncomfortable about the insurgent Mal had shot in the ditch, even though he was aware that this might be harder to explain under the Rules of Engagement.Finn said: ‘That’s the first time I’ve killed someone.’‘Me too,’ Mal said.‘All right with it?’ Sol looked up at them as he nursed his ankle.‘Yup,’ Finn said. ‘’Course. That’s what we’re here for.’ But his face was hollowed and drawn.‘It did feel well weird.’ Mal sounded uncertain.Angus said nothing. He examined his feet, his cheeks hot and red, as the convoy sped out of the Green Zone.