I actually proposed to Anna on a trip up to Northumberland. It wasn’t like in the movies, although I had planned it to be so at a posh hotel. Instead, after nearly running out of time and nerve, I proposed in Seahouses in a local pub in which we were staying. I wish I had done something more for her. But it never really works out the way you plan it. Besides, I don’t think any of those melodramatic proposals enhance a true proposal from the heart. This was my first true commitment to anything, made entirely free from any work agenda or desire other than pure love.
Typically, I left Anna to deal with all the arrangements, including the sale of her home and the entire move, whilst I was deployed to the Middle East. Anna moved in and redecorated the house with the help of her sister, whilst I was oblivious to the whole episode, buried in the bullshit of the Middle East and focused on new and outstanding tasks for both the Steering Group and my promotion. I wasn’t ‘hot’ on this trip. I was getting acclimatised, I suppose, to this new enemy – the stench, the heat and the unforgiving rawness of being a Westerner in the Muslim world, trying desperately to respect their rules and customs but feeling utterly despised at the same time. The time would come when I would respect the Middle East unreservedly, but now was a different time. I resented this time when I was apart from my Anna. It was as though the sand people had laid claim to my private life as well as completely ruling almost everything in the minds of the Steering Group.
Anna was commuting to work and had taken on the full mantle of being a military wife – well, my partner at this time – left to organise everything, sort everything out alone and all totally unsupported. She was a very independent woman and that was a great comfort to me; she wasn’t needy or anything. She was completely able to deal with situations that arose on her own. Our first home was a modest three-bed semi-detached house. I remember the fantastic power shower, that leaked through the ceiling onto the cooker below, the bubbly wallpaper Anna’s cat loved to rip off the wall in the living room and the moss-ridden grass in the back garden that would drive me mad. All these little idiosyncrasies made the best memories and became a path allowing me back to a normal kind of life at weekends when I was back in the UK. Work was playing on my mind heavily and I couldn’t overthrow those thoughts all the time by being with Anna. It distracted me from our relationship at times and I’m sure she noticed but these were good days free from the burdens we carry in life after the passage of time.
Going home for the weekend was a great escape from reality and all the military shit. I know most guys in the military would have you believe they are having sex with women every minute they’re not at work, be it with their wives or one-night stands; in truth, it’s all mostly bravado. For me, time with Anna was much more special; when I was with her, I truly felt like a complete man, complete in every way. When I was with Anna there were no absences in my life, I felt utterly normal and complete, almost an illusion to fool me each and every weekend. From the outside we were just a great young couple starting out together, and that was true, but like the cans that jangled along behind the wedding car I was pulling a few heavy loads that were yet to be unhooked.
The garden was the size of a postage stamp and consisted of mostly moss with a crap wooden fence. George and Mildred, the couple next door, reminded us of that same-named TV show, although I think George was more of a Victor Meldrew. On the other side was a fucking lazy bitch whose shit was spread all over the front garden, bringing down the entire neighbourhood. None of this mattered as we were probably the noisy ones in the street. We loved to turn up the music at the weekends, get drunk and then dance like Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction, trying our best to win the twist contest at Jack Rabbit Slims on top of the sofa. Fun times. It really was a carefree time, lots of relaxing and weekends at home together. No real shit to be worried about as training was just training, no one’s life was on the line; it was like being back in Russia.
We had BBQs with Anna’s friends at home regularly and I started to put my feet outside the door of military life, if just for the briefest of moments. It was great, every weekend a party. The thing is, though, civvies don’t understand military guys. Civvies are usually tight and can never afford a round at the bar, probably because they’ve got a family and a mortgage, which as a young member of the armed forces with no commitments made most civvies generally boring. They’re not of course, but how do you have a polite conversation about blowing some fucker’s head off during a firefight or how you saw women being raped and men burnt alive in front of your very eyes? You can’t, so you talk about all the other mundane shit they want to talk about – work, football and fucking soap operas. It all directs you back to the solitude and the more accepting bubble of military life, being with the guys. It remains easier to avoid letting non-military people get too close to me.
It’s not that you even want to talk about anything to do with your job or what you’ve seen or experienced, which is what makes it so much easier to hang out with other military guys. You just know, you don’t have to ask, you don’t need to discuss any of it because it’s all understood and easily recognised by the way you act, talk, are silent, get angry, get pissed or whatever. It’s all perfectly acceptable and normal because you’ve walked the same patch of earth and just understand and respect each other without saying anything. You know when you’re with someone who has seen the other side of war because there is nothing to explain; you can both mutually accept each other as equals, accepting without reservation the other’s mannerisms, imperfections, or the inability to communicate effectively or communicate at all, and still be at ease. Trying to have a complex emotional conversation with someone who has PTSD is just gonna go in the ‘too hard’ basket for most civilians. That’s why no matter how fucked up veterans or serving members of the armed forces get down the local pub, it’s all okay to the military eye. Let them get on with it. Civvies will never comprehend that level of brotherhood and will never understand why sometimes servicemen just need to get smashed, be left alone, get upset about nothing, be withdrawn, difficult and sometimes just fucking annoying and appear to dislike people in general. It can and does sometimes lead to a pretty miserable lonely existence because you want to keep it all in without upsetting the public, but the more you keep it in the harder and more aggressive it all becomes in your mind to try and break out. It’s always the family that has to pick up all the pieces. Trust me when I say that all servicemen respect you, the public – that’s why we want to protect you. Just sometimes, some of us might lose our way home in more ways than one. Sometimes we need help but don’t want to ask and definitely don’t want to be a burden. I think above all, speaking as a veteran now, I don’t want to show any weakness, as it would translate into failure in my own mind.
The minute we moved into the house, my mother made things doubly difficult for the pair of us. Anna had made a card and gift-wrapped up the front door key which compensated for all the negativity I was getting from my side of the family. I remember my first time at home, my new home… My mother rang and asked when was I coming home. I simply replied that I was already at home, I’d bought a house and that was my home now. It went down like a lead balloon and within the hour my father had delivered the rest of my belongings to my new front lawn! I guess however stupid it sounds at that time in my life my apron strings were finally cut. I had defected away from one life to be with the woman I loved. I was happy to end that part of my life and get on with making a new life for myself. I think there was a lot to move on from. I had to stop the truth from my childhood hurting the new me and my future wife – find a shovel and bury it. The love-hate relationship between me and my mother ran deep. God rest her soul. I fucking loved her but equally felt like killing her at times.
To say that the build-up to our wedding was difficult would be a complete understatement. My mother made every effort to make the process as emotionally and practically impossible as she could. She tried to sink our ship at every opportunity, right to the point wher
e threatening ultimatums were made on both sides. We had arranged for all the family to come to the suit-fitting party for the wedding. We laid on some food for everyone so both sides of the families could be formally introduced. Now, my mother nearly destroyed that afternoon, I guess probably for three reasons: firstly, the realisation that I was actually getting married; secondly, she wasn’t the centre of attention; and thirdly, she was not in any way able to influence any of the outcomes for her son and future daughter-in-law. One of the chicks had decided to fly the nest, and I guess it must have felt too final for her. It was to be a Christmas wedding, so all the colours Anna chose were reds and greens, completely unappreciated by my mother who swore she would not be wearing green to the wedding. The response from me that nearly destroyed the entire event was simply: “Well, don’t fucking come, then!” My father must have smoked 50 Benny Hedgehogs that afternoon as he navigated an impossible course through the whole damn event.
Life went on like this until her untimely death. I think it’s the same in most families to some degree or other. Families, you’re born into them, you can’t choose them, change them or even communicate rationally with them sometimes, especially when emotions are involved. I don’t, however, believe they stick together. In my experience they self-implode and retain bitterness and memories. My childhood was to remain hidden, undisclosed yet inconveniently raw in my mind, but like impurities in molten steel the slag would float to the top and come out on the surface every now and again; this and my recent military experiences were starting to manifest themselves through anger. The Steering Group had given me the tools and mental capacity to harness, focus and utilise this anger to their advantage. Their methodology allowed me to almost tame the dragon inside, but all those tools and mental games do fuck all within the family environment. The on-off switch can never be turned off where family is concerned. This is probably because I refuse to employ military methodologies in such a personal part of my life, because family sit in another dimension. This is why interrogators and terrorists love to threaten your family, because it prods you in a different way and can break you quicker and harder than a sledgehammer. Family is not an escape for me, it’s problematic. As an operative it’s just so much easier to turn family off before and during ops because it clouds everything.
My family was and always will be the boys in my unit and Cdr Brown – the godfather of the Steering Group. He knew where I had really come from, he knew what lurked behind the collection of masks he had equipped me with. He knew what he had created and had made a home for me with the boys from Poole. These boys were fucking nuts but in a great way. I wasn’t one of them but I belonged to them, if that makes any sense. But now there was Anna, who could see my potential and my desire to be good and succeed but was unable to understand or be a part of the man I was becoming, a man who so wanted to be free but remained chained to a life built on the desires of evil men, hell-bent on a list of names which must be expunged from the human ‘razza’. The Steering Group’s grip was tight, from which there was no escape, except by completing the climb of their Purgatory, each step of which was carved with the names of those from the list who must be killed. It was the only way to true freedom for me now, the stage had been set. Although, such a freedom would come with a price which will always have the memories that the drink won’t ever drown or a night ever fully extinguish. Insomnia was in the post already and hard to disguise. But insomnia is a friend to the intelligence service. You can work longer, achieve more and deliver the impossible despite the fatigue and the anxiety as you over-process everything you get involved in.
I guess, looking back, the Steering Group was like belonging to a cult, a very, very religious one. Once you were in as deep as I was, to leave the cult would be devastating and the excommunication would be catastrophic. The utter loss of all the family, all the team. No contact. A vacuum in space awaited the defector, in utter darkness, and there was never any return to the light permitted. What was once simple and easy in life would become incredibly difficult. Life was made smoother providing you remained faithful. Your life’s struggles were sometimes made easy all of a sudden, things fell into place naturally for their members. It was wise to stay within the group and leave when the job was done and become a veteran with honour. To leave would be dangerous; people outside the group wanted me dead. The protection offered by remaining was overwhelmingly and magnetically attractive. The Venus flytrap of the group caged you safely away from the outside with only the strongest of defence mechanisms in place, allowing the occasional peak in from the outside world before the curtains were drawn in utter secrecy. To belong was everything. To leave was suicidal.
But even in that first home with Anna, I was always looking out the windows, looking to see who was there, what cars were parked, all movements monitored, all number plates recorded, each person a possible mirror and every child a delivery boy who wasn’t delivering anything from Amazon. This surveillance remains with me and haunts me to this very day. Who might walk down the drive looking to remove a name from their list? I’m often at the window at night and often go out to check the cars, the garage door, have a walk around and then at 2, 3 and 4am checking again through the windows, monitoring and recording. It drives me fucking mad, the paranoia and the endless fear of it all. Surely I made it onto a list of some other overseas fucked-up organisation.
My final deployment to the Middle East on Eagle was coming to an end and had seen me spend a considerable time away from the team which had been deployed elsewhere on land in Iraq in preparation for Operation Desert Strike and whatever else they had in their assignment package. I had little involvement, except some minor intelligence gathering, and played my part in a more observer type role. I would soon be seconded back into the full throes of the Steering Group. I had actually enjoyed the reduced responsibility, less tense yet remaining involved whilst I prepared for my wedding!
It had been a long six months away from Anna this time going through the Suez past the Adriatic and Bosnia and out into the Red Sea and then the big left turn into the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and the ever-present silkworm envelope. This deployment was a step down, a time to gather my shit together and prepare for the next assignment from the Steering Group. I had spent endless nights putting together suitable correspondence to Anatoly. It had to be carefully compiled with information subtly included in the innocent text that would be just enough to get a message through prompting him for a date, a place, a trip, anything innocent. Our last conversations together in person had opened a way of communication that allowed us to trade ideas in ways that would be extremely difficult to gain any intel from. Besides, most of what we talked about was rubbish anyway.
I was on the brink of my wedding and my promotion, which would all come together should I make the flight out of Dubai! I enjoyed a few parties in the SNCOs’ bar aboard, getting fucking bladdered (drunk) and spent long nights bonding with the guys and the crew, often ringing the bell to buy everyone a beer. It wasn’t unusual for me to see sandy bottoms in a bottle of whisky after a couple of bottles of wine or several beers. It would all start off very sensibly but always end in a mess, often being put to bed by one of the crew as they got up for breakfast. The best nights were in the Aruga room, an all-ranks bar deep in the bowels of the ship. It was a regular nightclub. Entry was only permitted after shooting a can of beer and then screaming at the top of your voice: “Arrrrrrruuuuuugggggaaaaa!” It passed the time. As was so often the case in my line of work everything was fucking boring for such long periods of time, months, even years before a brief interlude of crazy action-packed adrenaline-fuelled nonsense hit the stage. So, to pass the boring times we got smashed, spun dits (told stories of war, etc.) and generally made a nuisance of ourselves.
Anna had threatened to cancel the wedding should I fail to make the flight home. There were many things lining up to fuck up my return home. The ship was deployed with heightened tensions in the NAG and it was looking increasingly likely that the
ship might not dock in Dubai. I was frantically trying to arrange alternatives. Operation Desert Strike kicked off and saw cruise missiles released from USS Laboon, USS Russell, USS Hewitt and USS Jefferson City (attack sub) against Iraqi air defence targets. I gotta say, the targeting was pretty accurate for some bizarre unexplained reason. But tension in the Middle East was rising fast. I was pleased to make an exit. I felt relieved to get out of there.
The ship eventually docked, and I got a transport to Dubai airport and picked up an RAF flight to Brize Norton. The RAF wouldn’t ever get any awards for airline of the year or anything. I flew fucking backwards in a VC10. I think the flight was like seven hours of uncomfortable torture coupled with a shit RAF packed lunch consisting of a mushy apple, a wet cheese sandwich, a carton of warm Kia-Ora orange juice and a biscuit, all in a flimsy white cardboard box. Anyone who has flown RAF will have a similar story to tell. However crap the flight was it didn’t matter as I landed to meet Anna, the only person who has ever come to meet me back from deployment, either at Brize Norton or any other airport or port. No one else had or would ever do that for me; Anna did several times. That meant so much to me. Coming home after time away to be greeted by an empty arrivals lounge is dreadful, but worse is to see all your comrades’ families waiting expectantly and no one there for you. It makes you feel more alone than if you’d landed on Mars. It was late at night and England greeted me in darkness, wet and typically miserable. The only warmth or sunshine I received was from Anna as we made it home to our little secret place away from the world and all the shit floating around in its oceans of demands, misperceptions, conflict and utter chaos. I allowed my mind to turn off, if only for a short time, as I dissolved into her comfort.
The Steering Group Page 34