Danger Close

by Colonel Stuart Tootal

  Finally, I reflected on the losses we had suffered and the strange fraternity that we had become. Based on a membership of tough selection, training, attitude and sense of our past, the ethos of 3 PARA had been strong before we had deployed to Helmand. But it had been re-forged in an even stronger metal of kinship through shared hardship and having triumphed in adversity, danger and collective grief. It was a sense of comradeship that binds men together and can only be born through the shared experience of battle. It extended beyond the battalion to the rest of the Battle Group where there was an inclusive membership, because regardless of parent regiment cap badge everyone was valued for bringing something to the table. It was bred from being part of an extraordinary sequence of events and an exceptional endeavour. For those of us in 3 PARA we also felt that we had walked out of the shadows of the exploits of our forebears at places like Arnhem, Suez and the Falklands and could now walk tall in the same light as them. It was a simple comradeship of arms that an outsider who has not lived through similar experiences finds difficult to understand. It was something that was brought home to us as the wheels of the aircraft thumped down on to the tarmac of Kabul airport, and we entered briefly into a very different environment from the one we had just left.

  John Hardy and I spent two days waiting at Camp Souter for the RAF Tri-Star that would take us and C Company to Cyprus. It was dead time and it was a peculiar sensation suddenly to have nothing to do. I thought about going to see my old boss across the city in his ISAF headquarters, but David Richards had already been down to say goodbye to us in Bastion and I didn’t want to intrude on his time. I also felt no inclination to be among NATO staff officers who drank coffee in their pleasant garden cafeteria, which would not have looked out of place on the King’s Road and who got upset when someone suggested that the rabbits which populated the manicured lawns should be shot as vermin. I wandered around the small market set up in Camp Souter that sold imitation muskets and Afghan trinkets. But we hadn’t been in Afghanistan on a holiday and I was not predisposed to buy anything. I sat with John Hardy and drank Coke as we watched the logisticians and headquarters staff who worked in the camp drink beer in the bar, play pool and try to chat up the female soldiers. It was a long way from the privations and dangers of northern Helmand.

  There were rear-echelon soldiers at Bastion, but they were the medics who looked after our wounded, logisticians who loaded the cargo nets with ammunition at two o’clock in the morning, cooks who manned the sangars when we ran short of manpower and the aircraft technicians who worked through the night to keep aircraft serviceable. Many of them deployed out into the field to provide forward logistic support to the district centres and knew what it was like to be shot at. Even when not deployed, they seemed to be part of the team striving to do their best to make sure that the Battle Group got what it needed to conduct operations. In Kabul there was no stifling heat or dust and the level of risk was much reduced. But it was the difference in attitude that struck me most and I was not surprised to learn that the place had been nicknamed KIA Napa after the Club 18-30 resort. Those around us seemed to have little idea of what the troops in Helmand were going through and most seemed hardly to care.

  It was just the same when we staged back through the international airport. Free from the officious logistics staff, who seemed to conspire to make our onward journey as tiresome as possible, we managed to spend a few hours in the bars and the shops behind the main terminal. They were frequented by European soldiers who strutted about in tailored combat fatigues, but who would never venture south to where the real fighting was taking place. I doubt that they could have pointed out on a map the locations of Helmand, Kandahar and Zabol, where British, Canadian and American soldiers were dying. I watched the men of C Company who sat quietly drinking soft drinks; the RSM had wisely banned drinking alcohol until we reached Cyprus. They were understated, gaunt and, like the rest of us, all they wanted to do was to get home.

  We flew via Cyprus, where each of the Battle Group’s sub-units were to spend two days ‘decompressing’. The original plan had been to spend a week on the island and I had been against it from the start. I knew how the blokes would receive the idea of spending a week of decompression in Cyprus on the way home. They would see it as an unnecessary delay in getting back to the UK and their loved ones. On hearing of the proposal, one Torn suggested that we should call it ‘depression’. It was Ed Butler’s idea and despite my reservations I knew that it had merit. Butler was drawing on his considerable previous operational experience and realized the importance of men having time to unwind from combat before seeing their families again and returning to normal life. My concerns were twofold. First, I considered a week too long and favoured a shorter in-and-out approach. Second, and of greater concern, I knew that if we were left subject to the vagaries of the RAF’s ageing air transport fleet, we could expect to be there for considerably longer than envisaged.

  I had discussed my concerns with Ed and also ran them past CGS when he came out to visit. Both were sympathetic. We agreed on a compromise of two days and the provision of a civilian charter aircraft to guarantee being flown out on time. This would allow the blokes to fly in, hand in their kit for laundering, undergo a mandatory stress briefing, hit the beach, get pissed, pick up a clean set of uniform and fly back to the UK the next day. Initial resistance to the civilian flight, by the ever helpful movers in PJHQ, was overcome when I indicated that I would be disappointed if I had to relay their reluctance to meet the requirement back to CGS. Needless to say, we got our chartered flight. In the end the whole thing worked like clockwork. The blokes arrived in Cyprus by midday, they were on the beach by two, the barbecue and beers were available by six and the fighting started by nine. People also got out on time the next day, albeit a little hung over and with the odd black eye.

  I walked down the steps of the aircraft when we landed in Cyprus at midday to be met by the RAF station commander. He ushered me and a small number of my staff to the airfield’s VIP suite where there was a bottle of champagne waiting for us. It was a kind gesture, but I felt a little awkward as the rest of the blokes trooped off to board coaches that would take them to Bloodhound Camp where their decompression would take place. The camp was an old training site. Situated on the southern tip of the island it was an isolated location and ideal for our needs, as we could be locked down away from the rest of the British military garrison and local inhabitants. The RSM and I drove down to join C Company for their barbecue later that evening. They had handed in their uniforms to the laundry, received a stress counselling briefing and had also managed to spend a few hours on the nearby beach. Now they were dressed in shorts and T-shirts and were drinking copious amounts of beer. They were on excellent form and I wanted to stay and get pissed with them. Prudently, John Hardy suggested it was time to leave after sharing a few beers with the Toms. I didn’t want to go, I was enjoying myself and I sensed the real fun was about to start. I reluctantly climbed into the car with my RSM. He was of course right to suggest that we should leave C Company to get on with it and pointed out that it might not be the place for the CO to be.

  We left just before it started. The format was roughly the same for all the companies. The chefs would pack up the barbecue and beat a hasty retreat as the first of the food started to sail through the air. Cans of beer then followed, as groups of soldiers grabbed upturned tables to protect themselves and began to return a volley fire of cans and food against their comrades. Company officers and NCOs joined in, and in some case led, the melee that erupted like a scene from a Wild West bar-room brawl. There was nothing malicious about it. Men who had not had a drink in months, but had become close through the stress of their recent front-line combat experiences, let off steam in a controlled environment. The companies were left to work it out of their system, although some of the biggest Regimental Police NCOs in the battalion were on hand to curb any wilder excesses and to arrange minibuses to take the wounded to the nearby A and E to have a few
cut heads stitched. When the fighting stopped, they cleared up the mess, resumed drinking and spoke about the battle of Bloodhound Camp they had just had. They also talked of their mates who were not with them, what they had been through and how they felt about it. It was a vital part of the process of coming to terms with their experiences and it was something that needed to happen before they got back to the UK.

  The next day, people woke with hangovers, work parties made good the rest of the damage from the night before and people spent a last couple of hours on the beach before picking up their uniforms and heading back to the airport. Padre Richard Smith watched a young soldier laughing and joking with his mates in the surf. The last time he had seen him had been six weeks previously. Then he had spent time with him when he had been frozen in shock and was still covered in the blood of a friend who had been killed in the same vehicle as him.

  The fact that Cyprus was such a success was down to the efforts of the staff officers at the headquarters of British Forces in Cyprus. They had been brilliant and laid on water sports and instructors to entertain the troops on the beach and transport to move us around the island. They also left us to our own devices behind the wire at Bloodhound Camp. We were well looked after and it made an important difference. The cabin crew of the civilian charter flight that flew us back to Stansted airport were equally helpful and made a welcome change from the indifference of the RAF flight attendants. They made a fuss of the soldiers and demonstrated a sense of understanding something of what we had experienced. I watched forks of lightning streak down from a leaden grey sky as our aircraft headed over the Mediterranean. A sudden jolt and the smell of burning caused a roar of nervous laughter and cheers as the aircraft was struck by one of the bolts of static energy. I joined in with the incongruous comments of how ironic it would be if, after all that we had been through, our aircraft was suddenly brought down by a lightning strike. However, we made it safely back to the UK and my mobile phone buzzed as I got off the plane in Stansted. In the last six months I had used it only once when back on R and R. I thought of how I hadn’t missed it as I picked it up and pressed the button to answer it. It was a call from the media ops officer in 16 Brigade informing me that the Secretary of State and the press would be waiting to meet us when we got back to the barracks in Colchester.

  It was the last thing I wanted as I jumped into the staff car with John Hardy and we headed down the A120. I thought about what I would say to the obvious questions I would be asked of what was it like and how did it feel to be back? Did people want to hear about the heat, the danger, the risks, the privations, the grief, the exhilaration, the relief and the fear? I was still wondering where the hell I would start as we pulled in through the gates of the barracks. A military media minder asked us to drive up to the battalion square where the press pack was waiting. We arrived just ahead of the coaches bringing the rest of the blokes to a barrage of cameras and popping flashes. Des Browne was there to greet me as I stepped out of the car. I noticed Karin waiting patiently a few metres behind him; she had been asked to wait while the Secretary of State and the press got their photo opportunity of him welcoming me back. I managed to get in a brief hug with Karin before journalists thrust microphones and lenses in my face and the bombardment of anticipated questions started. I looked over my shoulder and saw the blokes file off the buses. Children and wives rushed to greet their loved ones and small bundles of joy were lifted aloft by their fathers. Although an important part of our return, we could have done without the press scrum, but at least we were home.

  18

  Fighting the Peace

  I walked round to the side of the bed where Captain Jim Berry could see me with his remaining eye. His head recently shaved, his lack of hair revealed the angry scar of the surgeon’s knife that had worked to repair the damage caused by the grenade splinter that had penetrated his brain. Unable to speak because of the tube inserted into his neck, Jim communicated with the aid of a spell card. His fingers drifted over the gridded letters; I asked him to repeat what he was trying to spell, but still couldn’t get the meaning of it on his second attempt. His male nurse saw my plight and registered my discomfort at not being able to understand what he was trying to say. Jim spelled his message again and the nurse translated for me: ‘Jim says that he is okay, it’s good to see you and that he is going to Headley Court.’ That short, simple message made my day, as I cast my mind back to the last operation in Sangin when Jim struggled for his life on a stretcher by the LZ and I wondered whether he was going to make it.

  With the rest of the battalion on leave, I had spent the time visiting members of the Battle Group whose wounds had brought them home before the rest of us returned. Some of the conditions at Selly Oak had improved since my last visit and there was a noticeable increase in the presence of military medical staff on Ward S4. But not everything had improved. Although S4 was conceived as a dedicated military ward of the larger general hospital, it remained staffed by NHS nurses and civilian patients were still being treated there. One of the wounded told me how he had to listen to an elderly woman scream through the night for her husband as he lay in the darkness wondering whether he would ever walk again. Some of the NHS staff continued to display a marked ignorance of what men wounded in combat had been through.

  For Stu Hale, waking up in Selly Oak was almost as traumatic as stepping on the mine in Kajaki. Having been kept sedated since leaving Bastion, he could still feel his right leg. He was unaware of the full extent of his injuries and thought that he had lost only his foot. After coming round in the unfamiliar environment of S4 an NHS care assistant told him to turn over as she wanted to clean him. Hale told her that he didn’t want to as he was unsure of how badly hurt he was. In response she simply ripped back the sheets to show him what remained of his right leg; it was the first time he realized that it had been amputated above the knee. Men like Stu Hale and Sergeant Paddy Caldwell deserved better.

  Paddy spoke in short rasping breaths when I saw him. He struggled to articulate his words through the ventilator tube in his throat; the Taliban bullet that had exited through his neck had not only taken away the use of his limbs, but also meant that he was no longer able to breathe for himself. He was pitifully thin. His once muscular chest was now emaciated and shallow; it rose and fell weakly in rhythm with the machine that was keeping him alive. ‘I regret nothing, sir,’ he said. ‘I would do it all again if given the chance.’ I looked across Paddy to the attractive blonde on his opposite side. Given her attentive nature, I had initially presumed that she was a nurse. However, Mel was Paddy’s girlfriend. She had given up her job and the house she rented in Colchester to be constantly at his side since his arrival in Birmingham. Mel had to badger the nurses to change Paddy’s urine bags or evacuate his bowels. If they didn’t do it, she did it herself, unable to bear seeing the man she loved lying in such a state. Mel didn’t really blame the nurses, they were simply too busy and there were never enough of them.

  Stu Pearson didn’t need a ventilator, but I was fascinated by the small vacuum pump that was attached to the badly damaged tissue of his right leg. Stu talked about Kajaki, the decisions he had made and the chances of success of the vacuum therapy which would determine whether he would keep his remaining leg or whether it would have to be amputated like his left. On his arrival at Birmingham the surgeons were 90 per cent certain that he would lose the other leg. But the small vacuum pump that sucked air and fluid out of his wounds was having a dramatic effect. Deprived of oxygen, Stu’s body was encouraged to pump more blood to the damaged tissue. Within days, small spots of flesh began to grow back on what had once been just bone and tendons. Within a week the pink dots had joined up to cover the tendons and facilitate a healing process that meant he would keep his remaining leg. It was testimony to the professionalism of the surgeons in both Birmingham and Bastion but their clinical expertise stood in stark contrast to the general level of post-surgery care the wounded received in Ward S4.

  Visiting t
he wounded on returning from Afghanistan was an experience of mixed emotions. I remained distressed by their suffering and the incidents of sub-optimal treatment that still prevailed. But I was also humbled by their courage and absolute lack of self-pity. Jim Berry was the last of the wounded I visited that day. After seeing Jim I picked up Karin who had been waiting patiently in the corridor. She read me like a book and neither of us spoke as we walked to the car in the gathering darkness of the hospital’s grounds. She left me alone with my thoughts as we headed north to meet the families of those men who hadn’t managed to pull through.

  The Wrights lived in the suburbs of Edinburgh. Scotland’s capital city was in the grip of late autumn, the leaves were thick on the ground and the first chill of the coming winter was already in the air; a far cry from the desert heat of Afghanistan. As I walked up the garden path I knew that I didn’t want to knock on the door. I was met by Major Gordon Muirhead, a regimental officer who had been appointed as the Casualty Visiting Officer to Mark Wright’s family. I was glad that it was Gordon who opened the door. I had been dreading what my first few words might be had it been either of Mark’s parents. Gordon ushered me into a neat front room where I was introduced to Bobby and Jem Wright and Gillian, Mark’s fiancée. The couple had been due to many the following month; now the wedding would never take place. Gordon Muirhead had been with the Wright family night and day since they had been given the tragic news that their beloved only son had been killed in the gully beneath the ridge at Kajaki. Gordon managed to keep the conversation light until we sat down for dinner. As the meal drew to a close, I looked at Gordon before asking if the Wrights wished me to talk about the circumstances of Mark’s death. As I recounted the events of the day of days, Jem left the table. I looked at Bobby but he asked me to continue, telling me that Jem would still be listening from the front room. When I finished Mark’s mother returned. Jem stood looking at me, her hands on the back of a chair as tears rolled down her cheeks. In a faltering voice, she told me that Mark had always wanted to be a paratrooper and knew the risk that went with the job of being a soldier. But she also told me that the son they had waited nine years to have was their life and now he was gone.