Then I remembered the gasp as we were on street level. That sharp fizz of air augmented by trajectory. I hauled Steven to the wall of the sewer, to lean him against it. I lifted him up so he could perch on a brick shelf about a foot above water level, which was just wide and strong enough to support his weight. I lifted his fatigues, and checked his stomach. Just next to his belly button, was a small dark purple hole with black edges of wet ragged skin - a little fleshy well. And sloshing into that well, was the sewer filth. I could literally see the detritus in and around the wound, and I began to panic. Our field packs were sodden with the unspeakable, and Christ knows what our first aid kits were swimming in. Cleaning that wound and getting our hands on some antiseptics became an urgent, all-encompassing priority. But we were, bluntly put, in a dark sewer underneath a swarming village filled with any and all who might like us dead - and to make matters worse, night was drawing in.
Steven asked what I could see on his stomach, and it seems completely ridiculous to mention it now, but I told him ‘Nothing. You’re good to go.’ You know when a child falls down, or someone is in acute pain, and you tell them everything is OK, and that they are fine. There’s a million reasons we do that, and it works both ways. We say it so that they don’t worry, to ease in calming them down. For the person saying it, we are trying to hold onto something concrete and soothing while figuring out what to do next, even if the words represent a past that has recently been fundamentally altered - ‘You’re ok, you’re ok (well, you were ok a couple of minutes ago, but know I don’t know how we are going to get the care you need)’. There was no selfish inclination to me telling Steven that he was fine, other than to keep his spirits up and to keep doubt and fear from creeping in and taking vicious hold. Plus, I wanted him to keep thinking his body could function at optimum capabilities for as long as possible - we needed to move and if he started fretting about how bad the pain was and what it’s consequences might be, we would slow fast.
Whatever was going on in his head, I could’t stop what was going on in mine. Terror was creeping in. I felt intact, but my grip on composure was slipping. I knew his wound was bad. Gut wounds are nasty when they bleed out, but it’s the lack of blood that alarmed me. No blood means something serious got hit. An organ. Something of meaning - an integral part of the machine, not just the joins. And the sight of the filth seeping into the inky chasm was squeezing my terror into a fever. We needed to get out.
We managed about 500 yards before the pace of the filthy river began to quicken, and I saw we were approaching a bowl where more similar sewer tunnels congregated on all sides. As if the smell could worsen, it somehow did. It burned the nostrils, and as I choked the taste back, my tainted spit burned my throat, and send the infernal flavor down my gullet. The risk of my own illness was heightening, but Steven’s gunshot wound was so far beyond risk. I could picture infection gripping and ripping. I could see it. If not from the bullet presumably lodged somewhere within his person, then definitely from the shit swilling the wound.
The pace of the water was hastening further, at an alarming rate. I had tried body-boarding once on Anglesey, and that’s the closest thing to the sensation I can describe. That suction of water around your midriff, the quiet pressure before the crash of foam. I looked ahead and saw that the bowl was deep and churning, waste frothing everywhere - and to the far right, a solitary broad exit pipe, 4 feet across. You couldn’t see where it went, only that it was dark, and there was only a 6 inch or so clearance from the roof of the pipe and the surface. To the far left of the bowl, the ledge a foot up leveled out into a proper platform about ten feet across - a viewing platform over which to check the workings of this massive overgrown toilet. It was also embedded into the tunnel walls, offering a bricked corner behind which to crouch. A vantage point, or hiding place, whichever - it was better than the uncertainty of the pipe opposite it. At the very least, it would give us the time to assess our next move - if indeed there would be one.
I motioned to Steven the ledge, and he gave me a nod of recognition. The colour was fast draining from him now but he did his best not to show what was going on. This, Kayla, is a fine example of your husband’s bravery. Inside, his body must have been going into shutdown. But outside he was doing his best, probably trying to protect me, just like I had earlier tried to protect him. I waited for him, and we both approached the edge of the bowl, with caution. Falling would mean entering the bowl and whatever was in it. Looking at it and the spit of churn of the flow, I could’t imagine what harmful debris was stuck in that bowl, never mind the current which would spit you out into that little pipe with barely any air. We edged, terrified for our footing, and saw there was five feet from the edge of the tunnel overspill to the brink of the platformed ledge - our sanctuary. Just before the edge of the bowl, there was a step up, as the waste spilled over into the bowl. I put my foot onto it, and threw myself at the ledge. With all my gear soaked, I was less than graceful in flight, but my hands felt dry concrete and I gripped for all I was worth. Purchase assured, I hoisted myself up, and reached immediately for Steven. His body was talking his mind out of the distance of the leap, and he looked shaky as he rose onto the step over the bowl. I reached out my rifle for him to grab, which he did. I knew the rifle could take the weight of a man, but I was less sure that either of our grips would hold. Steven swung out on the rifle like a vine, and was suddenly below me, dangling over the bowl. I pulled him up, and we were there - made it.
As I dragged him back into the recess of the platform, I almost forgot the smell, as we tasted this tiny victory. Just as we slumped down, I saw the fresh wet imprints of our bodies on the dry concrete, like alligator tracks in and out of a river. I hopped up immediately and tried to cover them with dust from the recess. Last thing we needed was discovery.
Satisfied, I turned back to Steven. But Steven didn’t look great at all. The exertion looked like it had drained the last drops of fight from him. I took my gear off, and did the same for Steven. He winced a couple of times, and I asked him how his stomach was. And he responded with such grace that I almost did a double-take: ‘Thank you’. That was all he said. I never asked him fully what he meant, and I’m not sure I care. At the time, I took at as ‘You don’t need to bullshit me, but you’ve been great so far’. I dropped the act, and told him what I thought about his wound, while getting him comfortable (well, as comfortable as possible on a ledge over a giant flushing toilet sodden with clothes covered in fetid human waste).
We lay there listening, trying to steady ourselves. Exertion leaves a footprint which eventually lifts, but Steven’s exertion just wouldn’t dissipate. The darkness wasn’t complete, but my fears were now faultlessly constructed. I went through both of our packs. Some basic provisions, and a couple of containers of water - all covered in the sludge we pulled ourselves from. I used some water to clean Steven’s wound as best I could, and a touch to rinse the provisions down, and to give our rifles a quick clean. We had 3 chocolate bars, a strawberry protein bar, two bags of crackers and some gummy bears. I broke open the first aid kit, rinsed that two, and found the little bottle of alcohol gel. I cleaned Steven up as best I could, but the dressings were all destroyed. All I could do was ration the water, ration the food, ration the alcohol gel, and hope for a solution. I didn’t want to leave Steven to seek help - he wouldn’t last. We could only rely on being discovered by the right people, but considering our radio’s were destroyed, that looked bleak. Within the hour, a slow shock slipped over Steven, although his eyes remained focussed. He used his speech sparingly, and his body movements even more sparingly. And we sat there on that ledge for six days.
I won’t go into detail about every day. I will regale what is important, but I can’t dwell too hard here. I sat and cared for my best friend as best I could for 6 days, routinely cleaning and feeding him with what we had. What comes next will not be easy to read, and I picture it being as hard to digest as it is for me to write. As my pen hovers the page, I feel a phantom
standing over me - a wrought twisted demon, bent by fury, that has had me at it’s mercy every day since.
When we realized we weren’t being pursued, I filled the air with quiet one-sided conversation. I told him not to talk. I talked for both of us. But by day 4, his pain really betrayed itself. He had been so stoic, so strong, staring a certain death in the face, but never admitting that it might get the better of him. He burst into a thick sob, that echoed off the bowl walls, and eventually got lost in the mulch. He told me he loved you. It was simple - the purity of it is as solid now as it was then. He loves you - now, then, forever. All time. He was yours. As he faced his death, it was you he was thinking about. People travel a lifetime not feeling that, and I am one of them. I now know that that sense of utter devotion and belonging that can only mean love is definite - love is REAL. My tears are hitting the page as I write this. I could only imagine feeling, just for a second, someone loving me the way he loved you. If you ever wonder how he felt about you, in the dark embrasures of your mind where concern festers, and time has blunted the truth of your love together, you now know. You were everything to him. And you were with him to the bitter end.
And then I get to your children. And I don’t think I can write anymore. I watched him say his goodbye’s to you all. Nothing I can write will justify what he said about the love he showed me for his family, but let me tell you, it was given away in the harsh painful sobbing in that dark sewer in Afghanistan. His anguish at never seeing you again, his torture at never telling you one more time he loved you - the hopelessness of knowing he would never be there to support you again, or to guide his children through the minefield of growing up... I have seen what it means to love, and it was simultaneously tragic and beautiful - the ultimate opera.
Which makes the next part all the harder to admit. The authorities know, and I would imagine you do too. There is a big DISHONORABLY DISCHARGED stamp next to my name for a reason, and that’s the same reason I don’t have a single medal to speak of.
On the evening of day 4, his sobbing subsided. Then he asked me to kill him. He told me the burning was too great inside, the ache in all parts of him too hard to bare anymore. Our fate looked sealed, with our rations wilting. I expected the sewer flow to abate at some point, to enable me to reconnoiter, but it never did. Forward progress was fantasy. He asked me time and again through the 5th day. I remained steadfast. He refused to beg, but he had a trump card. I had told him, during one of our many conversations on Bastion, I would do the exact same thing, and that I would expect any true friend to listen to my wishes. He had me trapped by my own reasoning and stubbornness, and he knew it. I could’t argue with that. He told me that to kill him would be the greatest gift, to free him of the pain he was gripped by, to send him home to the heavens where he could watch over you and the kids. He said he had given everything for England, and there was nothing more to give. It was mission accomplished.
He begged all of day 5. There’s nothing really knew to tell here, save for that it was perhaps the worst day of my life.
Eventually he went quiet at the start of the 6th day, and didn’t speak again. His eyes were shut, and his breathing shallow. His energy reserves spent. After a breakfast of 1 inch of molded strawberry protein bar, I ended his life. It was instantaneous. I won’t add anything else, but I did it with as much care and love as I possibly could, which sounds just ludicrous. But it’s true.
I was overcome. I was furious, devastated, confused, happy. All sorts of emotions that left me in a state of extreme emotional anxiety and delayed post traumatic stress, or so my discharge psychologists tell me. I stood, then hurled myself into the churning water of the bowl. I took nothing with me, rather let fate decide what should happen to this murderer. I remember the familiar tepid foul deluge, and falling into it. And I remember nothing else.
The next memory I have is a hospital bed back on Bastion. Confusion. Hate for myself. Hate for being alive, realizing that in survival, I would be forced to live with what I did. I was mocked by a higher power, forced to endure a punishment that to me, was worse than death. I had been prepared to meet my maker, but my maker wasn’t ready for me - more than that he was intent on punishing me. And I would probably have done the same, if I was forced to decide the fate of someone who had done what I did.
As time passed, they told me what had happened. A fisherman had find me stuck against a grid at a river outlet, unconscious, pressed against the grating - 3 miles from the helicopter crash site. I was mangled from head to toe, but somehow carried the murmur of life. Which was enough for the fisherman to use me as a bargaining chip with my commanding officers. He originally wanted some munitions, but my superiors thought the munitions too valuable. They eventually bartered him down to some fast food from Bastion, which ironically wasn’t all that far away. Literally, I was as valuable to my superiors as a Big Mac. If McDonald’s need a hot new marketing hook, there you go. ‘Big Mac - worth swapping a half dead soldier for’...
I lay in that bed for an awful 3 weeks, as a battle waged in and around me. Physically, I was strengthening, slowly but surely, but in contrast, my spirits were darkening. A gloom was setting in, and I near welcomed it. Hate became welcomed, and I gradually entrenched myself in a the dank mental tomb of depression. Since that very day, I have never once come out. I was gripped by a series of pretty nasty surface infections, but nothing too serious on the inside. Malnourishment was the main problem, and dehydration. The feverish side effects of both of these became the bricks and mortar for my depression. They constructed the walls in which I dwell in madness.
I eventually regained enough strength to answer all the questions I knew were coming, and at this point, a sub-plot began to emerge. I betrayed myself by giving in to the labels they wanted to assign me. What difference it would have made is anyone’s guess, but... I told them I killed him. I confessed. I said I had to. They asked what alternatives I had, because, surely, given my survival, there was a way out. I didn’t want to go through the long story of our hell on that ledge, fighting off every mental demon that may ever face you. They were right. There was a chance we both could have survived, if we both took our chances and dived into the cauldron. But neither of us did. And when they asked me this, I didn’t fight it. I agreed that there was a chance. Such is my guilt, I agreed that there was a chance that things could have been different. I hung my head in shame, like a scolded dog. They may have guessed the truth but they didn’t show it. They treated me like I was a man who had been given an opportunity, in an extreme setting, to take another man’s life.
This is not a far-fetched scenario. Combat warps a man. The stress of war is just as bad. You are trained and trained, to the point of monotony, to kill. It becomes your be all and end all. There is nothing else but to kill. And in this mindset the act of killing is just as dangerous as not killing at all. To a less strong mind, killing can become a drug, the release of ending life an opiate beyond compare. The ultimate thrill in a setting where it is encouraged, and part of your job. Conversely, if you have not killed, but you have been expertly trained to kill, every moment up to that first kill is sparked with the crackle of intense anticipation. You know a kill is coming, you know that that most guttural and primitive of sensations will be activated, sooner or later. But what if it is never fulfilled? What then? I have heard of soldiers who go to great lengths to get that first kill out of the way, and to fulfill all that training. We are talking about an environment entirely preoccupied with the taking of life. The impact of this has many permutations, and releases many personalities. I mentioned earlier camp being like a huge psych ward - and thus we go full circle.
I was court marshaled. They painted me as a man who, in albeit an extreme circumstance, had killed a fellow soldier when alternatives to survival were at hand. I was never accused of being an all-out murderer, but they stopped just short. Thanks to my service, they decided not to take it further than simply stripping me of my medals and dishonorably discharging me. Word was out th
at I had killed Steven, but somehow survived myself. That was enough for people to judge me. I sealed my decent into infamy by never setting anyone right. I was so awash with guilt, confusion. Steven had begged me to kill him. Just begged me. Just like I would have done if the roles were reversed.
I was shipped back to England, the previous 9 years of my life wiped from the slate. I came back with no record, no history, no nothing. I didn’t have a place, a purpose or a home - especially after my parents took umbrage with my decision in the sewer. I hoped that they would see my rationale, at least understand my position and why I did what I did. But no such luck. I was home for an extremely uncomfortable 2 days, and, even though they never kicked me out, I took the initiative and left. Their son had gone from hero to zero in the blink of an eye, and their own pride took a massive hit in the balls. I think they were scared of the questions and the ensuing scrutiny, so I left. Neither party has contacted the other since that day. I was left with the money I had earned through my years of service, which had been steadily dripped into my home account from overseas. I had no dependents, and no plans for the money, so it was all still there. We are not talking about a great amount of cash, but enough to keep me afloat as I work out what to do next.
Ben Bracken: Origins (Ben Bracken Books 1 - 5) Page 10