by Jason Fox
From the outside, these rituals must have looked pretty stupid, but the games were considered a code of trust for anyone working within The Brotherhood. Disrespecting the rules meant trouble, as one of the group – a Scouser who we’ll call Gavin – found out to his cost during a long tour. Throughout the team, Gavin had gained a reputation for being really lazy. Completing some of the more boring administrative details on the job had seemed beyond him at times, and the lads were forever moaning at Gavin for not making the teas when it had been his turn.
‘It’ll be different this time, I promise,’ he said shortly after arriving on base. ‘I’m pulling my weight.’
‘No way,’ shouted one particularly annoyed soldier, after the bold claim had been made. ‘You need to “Queen’s Eyebrows” that.’
‘All right then, yeah,’ said Gavin, defiantly. ‘“Eyebrows!” I’m not slacking off on this tour.’
Gavin was inevitably caught out just a few days later when he claimed to have cleaned up the specialist vehicle hangar. In actuality, he hadn’t, and the place was a tip. He then threw a strop when somebody mentioned the forfeit.
‘I can’t walk around without any eyebrows,’ he moaned.
Gavin then attempted the unforgivable: he tried to weasel out of the bet, even claiming not to have taken up the wager in the first place, and that was a massive problem in a group as tight as ours. One by one, Gavin lost allies within the team. Refusing to shave his eyebrows off was annoying, but his dishonesty – by claiming he hadn’t agreed to ‘Queen’s Eyebrows’ in the first place – was viewed as a massive betrayal. Some of the blokes even wanted to knock him out for denying the agreement and arguments raged on for days until eventually we all pulled together for a meeting. When Gavin arrived, it was like he’d been dragged into his own murder trial.
And he was going down.
‘Here’s what’s happening,’ said one soldier. ‘If you won’t let us shave off your eyebrows, we’re going to come up with a punishment of our own and you’ll have to accept it, whatever.’
Gavin nodded reluctantly. Why he was so bothered about his looks seemed weird to me – vanity was so misplaced in war – but over the next day or so, we put together what was cheerfully called ‘The Box of Doom’, a suggestion postbox in which anybody could present ideas for a suitable punishment. The list, when it was read out, sounded hilarious.
Lick the sniffer dog’s bollocks for five minutes.
Wear the dog’s electric collar and get zapped for fifteen minutes – continually.
Get your ex-girlfriend’s name tattooed on your cock (in prison ink).
One of the suggestions played on his psychological triggers. Gavin had the fat gene – it ran in his family and he was paranoid about piling on the pounds. The note suggested banning him from the gym for a week, with an extra dollop of justice delivered in the form of a family-sized chocolate cake, which Gavin would have to pay for and then eat in the staff mess every night for seven days. He went into a meltdown, before finally, hilariously …
Screw it, kill him. He lied.
The note had been fairly tongue-in-cheek, but there was a serious undertone to it: We have no time for mistrust. Having somebody alongside us that we couldn’t rely on – a hothead, some dude with authority issues, a liar – often became an emotionally cancerous situation within the group. Once the rot was discovered, suspicion ate away at everybody’s confidence and it could be difficult to cut out the tumour.
Gavin eventually paid the price with ‘Bog Prison’. Every day for five days, he was locked into the local contractors’ Portaloo during the hottest point of the afternoon. There was only one toilet in the block and a queue of impatient people often snaked through the base as Gavin suffered in the heat and the stench of a cubicle that looked like the hellish hole from Trainspotting. His cell time always lasted an hour, and as the sweat poured off him Gavin gagged and retched inside until one of the team gave him a bang on the wall to signal that his time was up. Whenever he emerged, hurling his guts up in the sand, a mob of local workers would glare and curse at him angrily, only adding to the indignity.
‘Do I really have to do five days of this?’ he blubbed after his second shift.
But Gavin already knew the answer. Not taking the forfeit would have meant losing the lads’ trust for good, and that would have been the biggest punishment of all; a rejection that everybody in The Brotherhood was truly scared of.
13
Working through the seemingly never-ending training sessions in Poole made me feel hollow. I was messed up, confused. Triggered by the reality of a forthcoming tour, I couldn’t figure out whether I was coming or going. Making simple decisions, both at work and home, was a struggle, and I felt unable to pinpoint the exact catalyst for my upended emotional state. I’d become distracted and spaced out, but all my problems, every troubling symptom I’d experienced, could easily have been attributed to war fatigue rather than a more serious condition.
A lack of sleep. I used to work all hours on raids, running on fumes. Why would I expect to settle down to eight hours of uninterrupted kip every night when I got back to England?
My short fuse. Well, combat will do that to a bloke.
My inability to hold down a relationship. I’m having fun.
The heavy drinking. I’m having fun!
My indifference to work. I’m tired. It’ll come back. (It had better come back.)
That looming cloud, steadily approaching over the dark, churning English Channel. It’s getting faster. It’s getting closer.
Every personal issue could be easily explained away, except for that weird, gloopy ominous feeling, that shape, a sense that something wasn’t right. The realization of what it might have meant was shrouded because I was in a state of denial, a result of my fearing both for the immediate future and a loss of face with The Brotherhood. That unknowing mood was unusual for me, because while I wasn’t an outwardly sensitive person – the job had hardened me – I was emotionally intelligent. For the most part I could understand what I was feeling and why. If someone had annoyed me, the reason became clear very quickly. If I felt stressed, I usually understood the cause. But when it came to realizing what was wrong during that period, my awareness seemed lost, and the first understanding of what my feelings truly represented, when it arrived, jolted me harder than the bark of any automatic weapon.
My moment of understanding happened in a meeting, rather than a simulated warzone or some fast-moving counter-terrorism drill. As part of my UK work I had to attend a command course, two weeks of lectures and assessments that were given to various team-leaders-in-waiting from all branches of the military. Most of the attendees viewed these events as an essential but slow-creeping death-by-PowerPoint process in which we were taught how to plan, and lead under high stress, though there was always extra pressure for those more experienced people in attendance, of whom I was one. I understood that we’d be torn to shreds if our work didn’t meet the organizers’ incredibly tough standards. I sensed an edginess at play from the very first session.
Even before I’d arrived at the venue, I knew I’d have to learn a tonne of new procedures and practices, though some of the lectures did look genuinely interesting. During one component we used a computer programme setting out different combat scenarios. Our challenge was to decide how best to negotiate those flashpoints using the assets available to us, such as personnel, artillery and drones, so we could kill bad people effectively. A lot of what we were learning was dull, however. Having attended lectures from several military and intelligence big-hitters from Cobra, the Ministry of Defence and the Metropolitan Police, my next stop was a presentation in Trauma Risk Management (TRiM). This programme was designed to teach a commander how best to alleviate pressure on the people around them. If something bad had happened, such as an IED explosion, it would be a team leader’s responsibility to assess the people involved – those not seriously injured in the blast – with a series of questions: How do you feel? Has the s
ituation freaked you out? Can you carry on with your work? There was nothing too invasive in the questioning, and if a soldier seemed OK his commander was supposed to check in with him after three months, and then another three months later on. At that stage any symptoms, such as a propensity for violence, were considered fine in isolation, but a combination of issues meant trouble. Not that I was paying too much attention at first because this was a procedure that might have worked well in a civilian environment but during a scrap where people were getting killed and soldiers were fighting at intense levels, there wasn’t the time to make those enquiries. I figured it to be a waste of effort.
I don’t care about this.
PTSD: what a load of bollocks.
I just want to pass this course so I can have a team of elite troops to worry about in the first place …
But in that bland room full of computers, flat-screen TVs and projectors, I recognized the first indication that I might have been suffering from the onset of serious mental health issues. Three experts had been tasked with holding the TRiM presentation, one of whom was the Royal Marines’ welfare officer.
There was also an Army psychologist and a psychiatric nurse, a position that was, by then, established across the military. The Navy had a specialist that worked from our camp in Poole and all three of them batted off one another, explaining various stressful scenarios while detailing how a senior commander should recommend assessments to any one of their unit presenting a combination of negative symptoms. The checklist rang alarm bells:
‘They might be exhausted by a lack of sleep, even when they’re at home.’
‘Some people might develop a nasty temper and will react to even the slightest provocation.’
‘In some cases, people suffering from PTSD will struggle to hold down their relationships because they might have become detached and irritable.’
‘Heavy drinking is a sign they’re masking the issues.’
‘People can become indifferent to the things they once were passionate about.’
‘In that mindset, there’s a general feeling of unease and insecurity.’
After the list had been concluded, I leaned over to a mate. ‘Bloody hell,’ I whispered. ‘I’m ticking a few of these boxes.’ We both laughed, and then the inevitable denial followed almost immediately afterwards.
Not to worry, though, I thought. I’ll just crack on.
But that list soon played on my mind. As I drove home, I realized I was nearer to the end of my time in Poole than I was to the beginning, and the start date for our next tour was becoming more real. A few days after the course had finished, my unit were told of our responsibilities for the next trip. Intel was drip-fed to us about what could be expected while we were working in combat. Ordinarily, my excitement would have soared at the news of another chunk of time spent away with the lads, in action, but this time I felt weighed down by despondency. The lethargy and grumpiness I had experienced during those training courses had transferred to everything to do with my next tour. Whenever I considered the logistics of my time abroad, or what I could expect, my mood became lead-heavy. I felt stuck, unable to breathe, that black cloud now dominating the horizon. It was almost making landfall.
But why?
And then a few nights later the truth revealed itself as I tried, and failed, to fall asleep.
The cloud was fear, a dread of the forthcoming tour. And it wasn’t temporary.
That truth was inescapable now. I realized that I’d become terrified of what might happen on returning to that place, to war, and my concern wasn’t fleeting or controllable like it had been on previous occasions, but permanent and consuming. I hadn’t been able to dial it down and I was unable to shake the awful feeling that I might die, that I wasn’t invincible any more. The bullet to Danny’s throat and my attempt to find the safest hiding place in the fallout to our gunfight was part of it. Other horrors and injuries, like the daisy-chain IED explosion that had wiped out a bunch of the men we’d been relieving on our arrival, had also shocked me, when ordinarily those incidents wouldn’t have bothered me that much. Then there was the helicopter mission: one man KIA; that kid and his dark eyes, a mouth shaped into a blackened scream in my NVGs; the sensation of being hunted by the enemy as we attempted to locate our landing zone; and the thought that I might never see my family again playing on my mind as I crept through the vegetation, taking down hostile forces. The terror of combat and the aftershocks of death had made a permanent dent and I suddenly felt like a different person, as if a new, weaker me had arrived, but I wasn’t sure how that would affect me going forward.
There was acceptance. I realized that my previous attempts to shrug away the dark mood of recent months had been nothing more than a stab at denial. As I lay there, anxiety rattled me and I worried about my performance and focus on the next tour, given my mental state. During several dark minutes I freaked out that a mistake from me – some hesitation, or second-guessing at the wrong moment – would result in one of the other lads getting hurt. I even felt the guilt, and I imagined the resentment amongst the other blokes when the news of my cock-up had got around. The most frightening thing of all, though, was that now I felt very, very alone.
Was there someone in The Brotherhood that I could talk to? Dave, maybe. Probably. But the paranoia that he might let slip, tell someone else over a few beers, made it too much of a risk. Also, to my mind, asking for help seemed like an admission of defeat.
I wasn’t alone in feeling that way. Senior officers had once tried to check in on the returning soldiers after a tour and therapy sessions had been arranged. We had landed in England on a Friday and spent a few days in the house with our families before the personal admin began – trips to the dentist, doctor’s appointments, that kind of thing. Then it was announced that mental health meetings with a psychiatric specialist had been scheduled for us. Everyone experienced the same feeling of annoyance: What a waste of time – we’re elite soldiers! I figured it to be a needless distraction and just wanted to hurry up and get on with my real job.
We still had to go through with the sessions, though. The questions were invasive and a little too much for all of us. How do you feel? Has anything you’ve seen affected you? Have you been feeling violent towards your partner or friends? Nobody understood what the higher-ups were trying to gain from those interviews or what the implications of our full disclosure might have been.
Ultimately the therapy didn’t work because nobody had wanted to admit a weakness to their superiors. And admitting to a problem would have made us feel pathetic. There was a little suspicion too. When the attending soldiers eventually gathered and spoke about it on the base afterwards, it turned out that everybody had clammed up (or so they said). Any plans to go forward with the exercise were later abandoned by the people in charge.
But now terror had taken over everything; it was a new enemy. I was fearful of what I had experienced in war and how it might affect me in the future – my judgement was skewed. I was fearful of what might happen to my career if I placed my symptoms down on official records. I was fearful that the lads, if they found out how I felt, might view me as weak, or that my position in The Brotherhood could come under threat – my existence and purpose in life felt jeopardized. Most of all, the fear that I was now capable of being really terrified was all-encompassing and I was caught in an ever-tightening circle of confusion. My environment – a macho, alpha-male collective where the idea of having a stiff upper lip and not complaining was key – had paralyzed me. What I really needed to do was to reach out and ask for help, but lads like myself weren’t encouraged to open up, or to express sadness or upset, to our peers. Instead soldiers would hit psychological rock-bottom then brush it aside.
‘Yeah I’m all right,’ they’d say. ‘Who gives a crap?’
My reality was that the people on base were probably the best equipped to locate an escape route for me because they had experienced identical horrors. Yet I couldn’t ask them because no one els
e would have admitted to sharing those same insecurities themselves. I realized I was even more worried about their opinions than the idea of going back to war.
I had been taken hostage psychologically.
14
I’d been forced towards a tipping point and had to act decisively – no second-guessing, no hesitation – in a situation where sharp thought felt like a diminishing skill.
I know that I was pissed off with being pissed off and something had to give, but remembering the exact trigger point, a moment, or epiphany convincing me to approach the unit’s psych nurse in Poole, is a reach, and the details are fuzzy even now. Maybe I’d been reminded of his work during another long, dark night of the soul where I’d replayed the checklist of PTSD symptoms over and over in my head. Or perhaps the TRiM programme had been brought up in some casual conversation with the other blokes in attendance. My shame at being indifferent to training would have shoved me towards resolution, for sure – guilt was something I struggled to deal with. Either I was going to have to address the brutal fact that a life of excitement now seemed utterly joyless, or I’d have to quit the job, because it wasn’t fair on the blokes I served with, especially the younger ones who would have traded places with me in a heartbeat. I can only assume there was something about my situation that made me feel it was OK to open up, or ask for help, even though I remained unconvinced about the value of mental health care for soldiers like myself, but there seemed to be no other choice, not if I was to survive this scrap. I didn’t want to leave The Brotherhood.
It had been a cold, wet morning when I called the psych office, but every day was miserable back then. If someone had asked me to recall the weather of any given month throughout those weeks in Poole, I’d have sworn it had been the same pretty much every day. Overcast. Damp. Grim. But come on, it couldn’t have been, not for every moment of one whole year, even in England. Yet to my mind it had tipped it down constantly and the coastal skies had been black 24/7 from the minute I had landed back in the country.