We were both acutely aware there had been tragic loss of life in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but I felt the right thing was for me to go. My view was that even though I was a mum going to a war zone, it was no different from the hundreds of young dads going out to do their job and serve their country. Some dads are deployed when their wives and girlfriends are pregnant and the women give birth when they are away. They normally get compassionate leave for two weeks to meet their newborn baby.
As a woman, if I was pregnant I would never be deployed, but now I’d had my six months’ maternity leave, returned to work, got back to fitness and it was time to do the job I’d signed up to do. Naively, I was convinced there was much less chance of me getting injured in Iraq, so even though I was desperately torn about leaving Milly, I felt it was the right thing to do for my family and ultimately this was the job I’d signed up for. When I gave birth to Milly and decided to stay in the Army I’d known that one day I might have to leave her and that day had come.
So the decision was made. I’m very single-minded and headstrong and I said: ‘No, I’ll go instead of you as it makes far more sense.’ If I’m honest, Jamie didn’t have much of a choice about it really as I steamrollered him into agreeing. I knew he would have liked to have gone as he’s a proud man and it was hard for him to see his platoon go off and not be with them, but this was something I wasn’t going to budge on. I did it for him and, in my mind, so our child would have a father. Ironically, at that time I believed Afghanistan, where Jamie would have been deployed to, to be far more dangerous than Iraq.
Once the decision was made Jamie did everything he possibly could to support me, just as he always did. I had only two and a half weeks to sort my life out and then go to my first conflict zone. My parents were absolutely devastated when I told them that night. Mum said she couldn’t understand why I was doing it and asked if I’d really considered how hard it was going to be to leave my baby.
For me, preparations were so fast that I didn’t really have any time to think about the consequences. I went to see Nikki, who was gutted that I was going but promised to help Jamie look after Milly while I was away and said that she’d support him for me.
Within days I kissed goodbye to Milly for the first time as I was placed as a priority case on an OPTAG (operational training and advisory group) course, where they had a town set up in ex-Army quarters. There were people dressed up as locals, playing the enemy; I had refresher training to teach me how to deal with the enemy, the rules of engagement the British Army follow, as well as methods used for clearing buildings and compounds. You don’t just go storming into a building as there could be anyone in there, so I was taught how to check that it is empty and how to deal with the enemy if they are hiding inside, including warning: ‘Stop or I’ll shoot’ before firing a round. You all have your weapon and everyone has to practise and re-practise through role-play. We were shown how to use equipment we might be given in theatre, given presentations on IEDs, showing what they could look like, what to expect and how to deal with them, how to recognise heat exhaustion in people, and there was even a talk on sexually transmitted diseases and protecting yourself over there. It was a pretty intense four days, starting at seven in the morning and ending at seven in the evening.
Every morning before it started I’d ring Jamie and tell Milly I loved her down the phone. I missed her terribly but I knew this was just the start and six long months in the Iraq desert stretched ahead of me. The British Army training is second to none but the fact is nothing can prepare you for the harsh reality of war. Everyone has to do the course, no matter what trade or rank you are.
Life seemed to hurtle towards deployment day and I wrote a will, took out life insurance and wrote a letter that says: ‘Not to be opened until my funeral’. I still have it now and it’s still sealed. In it, I planned my own funeral and I asked for Leonard Cohen’s version of ‘Hallelujah’ to be sung. I also told Mum, Dad, Jamie and my brothers that I didn’t want them to waste their lives grieving for me but instead to channel all their energies into looking after Milly. They weren’t to wear black; instead I wanted them to celebrate my life and be proud of what I’d achieved. I also wanted Milly to have my medals when she was old enough.
Everything was efficient and practical and perhaps I was a bit in denial about the realities I faced ahead of me. As Jamie had eight years more experience than me in the Army he helped me pack my kit as he’d done in his Infantry days. ‘Don’t worry about Milly, I’m going to take care of her,’ he told me. He recognised that that was one of the most important things and he helped me to choose lots of pictures of Milly to take so a bit of home would always be with me.
I also had my eyelashes tinted, my armpits, legs and bikini line waxed and my hair dyed – there are no beauty salons on camp. It’s also impossible to wear make-up when it’s so hot as it just slides off your face. A contraceptive injection was also booked in at the doctors – not for birth control, but so that I wouldn’t have any periods. Every female soldier I knew did that when they were on deployment as it’s one less thing to have to worry about.
One of the more difficult preparations was that your kit had to be marked with a number, made up of the first three letters of your surname and the last three numbers of your military number. You have to write it on the front of all your kit and body armour so that you are identifiable if you are injured or killed. It’s not a nice thing to do at all. Jamie helped me write on the letters, but as we did it we were both silent, thinking about why we were doing it.
My parents came down a few days before I left. Mum tried to talk to me again about why I was doing this. I told her: ‘Mum, I can’t talk about this now. I just need your support while I’m there. I’m going to a war zone and I need to know you are there for me.’
Because I was going to miss Milly’s birthday and Easter we had an Easter cake and she got to stay up really late. I put on a smile and made a pretence of eating, but inwardly I felt sick with nerves and I had no appetite. When we finally put her to bed I kissed her goodbye and told her I loved her and that I’d be home soon. In my mind I was already counting down the days until I’d be home again and I consoled myself she was too young to understand what Mummy was doing.
It was still pitch black at 4am the following morning when a dark green Land Rover came to pick me up from the door to take me to RAF Brize Norton. My best friend’s fiancé knew how upset I was about going so he volunteered to do it to give me moral support. I said goodbye to Mum and Dad and to Jamie but I didn’t cry – if I’m really honest, I felt numb. It’s like when you wait for a holiday, and you are travelling to the airport and it doesn’t feel real as you have been waiting so long for it. Jamie wanted to hold me and his last words were: ‘I love you, Hannah.’
Anxious, I didn’t speak on the two-hour drive. We stopped and got a McDonald’s breakfast on the way, the last one I’d be able to eat for a while. Driving into the base I felt a knot of nerves twist inside me before I was picked up in a whirlwind of checking in, showing ID and going through all the protocols you have to do to ensure you’ve got all the kit you need with you before boarding a huge RAF aircraft with one piece of hand luggage. The most important item in my carry-on bag was a photo of Milly smiling in a pink romper suit.
On board, the aeroplane was just like a charter flight inside with seats. It’s anything but a holiday experience, though, as you are all in kit and there’s an air of expectation. It’s not a pleasant feeling – you can sense everyone’s trepidation about what they are flying into. Surrounded by other military personnel there was plenty of banter, but I didn’t have anybody to share my jangling nerves with as I was flying as the sole member of my unit.
Before landing at our final destination in Basra there was a brief stop-off at Kuwait at a military airport. The Kuwait camp was a vast sea of tents. It was the middle of the night, the air was cool but there were unfamiliar sounds, and a silence fell on everyone as we waited to board the second plane. This
time it was net seating for the two-hour flight and we had to put on full body armour. The lights were on as we left Kuwait but when we got to half an hour before landing, they were turned off – the mortar threat was very real. I looked around and all I could see was the whites of all of the lads’ eyes in the pitch black. Fear was palpable as everyone was nervous about landing safely.
As we touched down at Basra Airport our nerves were justified as we suffered a mortar and rocket attack, which was quite a welcome. You couldn’t see out to spot the telltale streaks across the sky, so the first we heard was the deafening crash of an explosion, which shook the plane. We disembarked with mortars still flying over our heads and they were strangely beautiful as they traced across the sky like shooting stars.
To be honest, at first I had no idea what was going on. Then an alarm went off that sounded like a World War II siren you hear in the movies and we were all ordered to lie on the ground. For the second time that night all you could see was the whites of everyone’s eyes, except they were wider this time in the moonlight. Seconds later there was another series of booms. We’d been travelling for twenty-four hours and were absolutely shattered; we all lay, quietly praying for the all-clear. Someone tried to break the tension by saying: ‘Welcome to Iraq!’ but everyone was rattled. Little did I know it but compared to the rest of my time in Iraq, the explosions I heard then were distant ones.
When it finally ended we were all ushered, shaken, into the airport to collect our bags. The staff, who were accustomed to regular onslaughts as a part of camp life, were all very matter-of-fact as they were used to the mortar alarm, but I didn’t even have time to fully register what had just happened and its implications as I was so exhausted. There was a speech about a form we then all had to fill in that checks you into Theatre.
After I had collected my bag, I was greeted by the guy whose job I would be taking over. He led me through the camp, which was as huge as a small town. First, he took me to where I would be sleeping – a shack that resembled a large Anderson Shelter with individual rooms inside. On the mud floor you had some matting and a cot onto which you put your sleeping bag. You were given a laundry sack with a tag with your name and number on it. It was incredibly dusty from the desert everywhere, including the room, and it was stiflingly hot. To try and make it a tiny bit homely I placed a photo of Milly and Jamie above my bed and then managed an hour and a half’s fitful sleep before I had to get up to be briefed about my new job.
My eyes were rolling in my head with tiredness as he explained my role was ‘OPLOC’ or ‘Operational Location’, a largely administrative role that involved checking people in and out of Theatre and briefing new arrivals. This could include full units arriving to individual people like myself coming in. A darker side of the job was checking who had been killed or injured. I started work later that day after a few more hours of getting my head down.
Although my job was initially admin, we were still acutely aware of the risks. The mortar bomb siren became almost a daily part of our lives. The second we heard the warning, dropping to the floor became an automatic reaction. The abnormal becomes the grinding norm and we lived on our nerves, constantly aware of the threat. Just as terrifying was the fact that kidnap and rape became risks. The reason the kidnap threat was stepped up was that someone had stolen some of the camp laundry. The system in place was that you’d stick all your dirty kit into the sack you were given, which was tagged with your name, dump it in a huge laundry bin, they’d take it away and twenty-four hours later, you’d collect it from another bin. Somehow some uniforms had gone missing.
I can only speculate, but I suspect it would probably have been local guys who were threatened that their families would be killed if they didn’t do it. But it meant there was a risk (albeit a relatively small one) that someone might try to enter the camp or trick a patrol. The reality was they probably wouldn’t have got very far as they’d have been stopped at the gate and all patrols were aware of the risk – and no one was taking any chances.
What I hadn’t expected about camp life was that it wasn’t totally self-contained and insular. Every day locals would turn up at one of the gates to be employed in various roles inside the camp as contractors. Some hated what you stood for, and particularly as a woman, as pretty much every adult female we saw from outside wore a hijab or a burka. We weren’t allowed to walk around in groups of less than four because of the perceived risk, so it meant that if you wanted to go anywhere on camp you had to have someone with you. You were also warned there was a risk of snipers and that one had shot at quite a few of the boys outside camp. Outside camp mortars and IEDs were an ever-present threat.
When there was a death or serious injury the whole camp would be shut down into what was known as ‘Op Minimise’. When Op Minimise kicked in, the Internet and phone lines would be shut down and there would be no communication with the outside world. This would ensure they could inform the family of the deceased or injured before you rang up your own family and said: ‘Somebody died here last night and I know who it is.’
Op Minimise happened regularly during the worst times. And quickly I learned the signs that there was bad news coming. The office would go a bit quiet beforehand, then the Commanding Officer would make a solemn announcement. Initially there were no names, only their Army numbers. Tears were rare – at least in public – but always there was an overriding sense of sadness that would spread throughout the camp. Often I felt: ‘What a waste’ and you felt for the families who would receive the news they would have prayed wouldn’t happen.
The longest Op Minimise was in place after a huge IED absolutely destroyed a tank. It was miles from the camp, near Basra city, but still we all heard the bang. At first it was so loud that I thought the camp itself had been hit. We all waited for the mortar alarm to go off, but it didn’t. The IED was so huge there was no chance of anyone surviving. Tragically, the whole team of four was killed, including a female soldier who was a friend of Prince William’s.
For days afterwards the camp was locked down with no contact with the outside world and inside everyone was in mourning for the loss. Morale hit rock bottom after that as we all felt for their families. It hit the female soldiers even harder if there was a possibility that a woman was among the dead. You thought you knew the worst the insurgents could do and then they still had the ability to shock you with something as extreme and horrific as that.
That incident brought home to every one of us the horror of war. While we didn’t know everyone who was killed, every death or injury affected us all as we realised someone’s loved one was gone and we also knew that next time it could be someone we knew… or even ourselves. The truth was, life generally in Iraq was absolutely horrific. Aware they could be engaged at any moment by insurgents the guys faced nightmares on patrol. However, despite the threat of IEDs, snipers and mortar and rocket attacks, they unflinchingly served their country. Their courage is extraordinary and I have so much respect for them as it’s such a hard job.
After a few weeks I was moved to another area of the camp, called Camp Charlie. There, I joined two other women inside one section of living quarters, made up of huge sand-coloured tents. Each of the shared living quarters was divided by a wooden wall so that you had privacy; a corridor ran the length of the tent. I was the only mum in my working group. There were three of us in my room: a forty-something flame-haired soldier called Debbie Hill, who was the bubbliest Territorial Army Private you’ve ever seen, and Corporal Sally Allison. They became two of my closest friends out there, along with another soldier, Corporal John Lewis, whose tent was nearby and who used to keep an eye out for us.
Unlike the Anderson Shelters, these tents had no overhead protection so the ‘powers that be’ devised a way for us to avoid getting shrapnel wounds if a mortar or shrapnel whizzed through them: we all had to build our own ‘Concrete Coffin’. First, we were taken to collect a series of breeze blocks, which we then had to drag into the tent. Then you’d build yoursel
f a two- or three-block high wall around your bed space. You were also offered a camp bed, but John explained to me that everyone turned it down and chose to sleep on the floor in their sleeping bag – the risk was that if a mortar bomb hit, the shrapnel could slice through the tent and kill you. So inside your Concrete Coffin you had more protection the lower to the ground you were – unless you took a direct hit, of course.
Inside our ‘coffins’ we were also handed a mosquito net and a hard mattress. Above the space you had to pin an A4 piece of laminated paper with your name, number and rank on it. That way, if anything happened to you, or if your accommodation was bombed, there would be a way of tracking who was supposed to be there. The coffin became home for the duration of my tour. To try and make it a little less grim I used Blu-Tack to plaster it with photos from home of Milly and little drawings and paintings she’d done at nursery. Everywhere I went, I always carried a photo of her under my body armour next to my heart.
Whenever I got a chance I’d ring home and tell Jamie what was happening and I loved to hear Milly’s voice. ‘I miss you and I’ll see you soon,’ I’d tell her. She used to say, ‘I miss you too mummy.’ It was so bittersweet, as while I was over the moon to hear from her my heart was breaking because I missed her so much. It was like a physical pain.
Mum also posted me a pink shower curtain, so I hung that makeshift over the top of my bed. It wouldn’t have won plaudits as a design feature as it looked awful, but for me it was a reminder of real life back home.
Day to day, though, life was pretty grim. Showers and loos at Camp Charlie were worse than festival standard so you’d always wear flip-flops – even in the shower. There was a ‘Portaloo man’ also known as ‘the sh*t man’, out of earshot, who drove around with huge ‘hoovers’ that sucked the poo out of the loos each day. Often they were so full you’d have to kick the front of them to get the poo to settle so that you could sit on the toilet without it touching your bum.
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