Eventually the doctor turned to me and effectively told me what I already knew: ‘Good news, there’s no internal bleeding but you do have a concussion so we are going to keep you in hospital for observation for the next few days.’
Once everything had calmed down and I was ‘in the clear’ one of the doctors pointed to a phone and told me to ring my next of kin and tell them that I had been injured. It was, they said, far better that I do it than some anonymous voice on the end of a phone. It was a call I didn’t want to make. My wife was my next of kin but my marriage was over. I thought about what to say for a few seconds before calling home.
‘Hi, it’s me. I’m fine but I’ve had a bit of a smack. I’m OK, a lot of overreaction, but I’m in hospital for a few days. There’s nothing to worry about. Can you let my folks know?’
That was about the extent of the conversation. I could sense concern but the chat was minimal.
An hour later and I was on a general ward surrounded by soldiers with dodgy backs, twisted ankles and infected mozzie bites. I felt as if I was being punished for some unknown crime. Most of the real battle-injured, those soldiers who’d been shot or blown up, were on the Intensive Care Ward, where they would spend a few hours before being flown back to the UK. We were the semi-professional injured. I drifted in and out of sleep that night, suddenly being woken by what I thought was a loud bang and thinking I was reliving the explosion, then realising the noise was from more wounded troops arriving.
A day later my team arrived back in Bastion and the joking began. Oz Schmid was one of the first to visit and took the piss out of me relentlessly. But alongside the humour, everyone knew, including me, that I’d had a lucky escape. A week earlier Dan had been killed and now I was lying in a hospital bed with concussion. Soldiers, ones unluckier than me, had been killed in almost identical IED strikes to the one I had survived. It wasn’t lost on me that maybe this was something of a wake-up call. I’d spent the last few weeks really pushing it, going after bomb after bomb, thinking I was invulnerable, and that somehow the rules didn’t apply to me. But at that moment lying on my own with time on my hands it began to dawn on me that luck as well as skill was going to be needed if I was going to survive Afghan.
13
R & R
R & R – rest and recuperation – two words guaranteed to bring a glowing smile to any soldier’s face. R & R usually kicked in about halfway through the tour, a two-week break from the horrors of Afghanistan, a chance to forget about killing and getting killed and a milestone in anyone’s tour of duty. But unlucky soldiers got their R & R slots at around week eight of a six-month tour, which meant they would have four hard, solid months to do when they returned to Helmand. Conversely there were also soldiers that spent four months deployed before they got a break. With 10,000 troops in Afghanistan all requiring a two-week break the whole R & R schedule needed to be carefully managed. No unit could be left too short of manpower to complete the mission. The general feeling among soldiers in Helmand in 2009 was to survive up until the R & R date and you were halfway home.
After three days in a Bastion hospital bed, doctors gave me the all-clear to return to work on the condition that I didn’t deploy on the ground for two weeks. I had a perforated eardrum and if it was going to repair properly then flying in choppers was out and so was being close to things that went bang, not ideal for those employed in EOD. The two possibilities open for a non-deployable ATO were either training fresh troops arriving in Helmand or working in the Ops Room as a watch-keeper, not something I relished.
I entered the Ops Room apprehensively, wondering how I would be greeted. I was still convinced that a lot of people within the Task Force thought I was a bluffer, feigning injury to get a few cushy days in a comfy bed. But I needn’t have worried.
‘Kim, welcome back. Glad to see you’re fit again,’ the OPSWO said as I entered the Ops Room. ‘Got some good news. We’re sending you and your team on R & R early. Your search team will stay here and go on R & R next month. But we’ve managed to find your team a slot. Frankly you’re no use to us here if you can’t go out on the ground.’
He smiled at me with a look that said I should be delighted but I wasn’t. I left the Ops Room feeling pissed off and concerned about the whole R & R situation. My team was now being split up after three months of living in each other’s pockets. The REST element would be working with another ATO and if anything happened to any of them I’d blame myself.
Then there was my failing marriage. Being a typical bloke I’d done a pretty good job of not facing up to the problems at home, convincing myself that I needed to focus on the job. But the time had come to face the music and frankly I felt more comfortable facing the Taliban.
Later that afternoon, I told Lewis and Dave that R & R had been brought forward and their reaction could not have been more different from mine. They chatted and joked like a couple of kids who’d been told that Christmas was coming early.
With a certain amount of dread I then phoned home. While just about every other soldier’s partner would be getting the balloons out and family round to see their hero husband or son, my wife simply said, ‘Are you planning to stay here?’ It wasn’t a long conversation.
The following morning the long, arduous and painful process of trying to leave Bastion began. Everyone departing was given their passport and mobile phone, if they had one. The talk was about holidays in the sun, seeing the kids and shagging wives and girlfriends. Seemingly endless sheets of paperwork were completed following a ten-hour wait, where vast quantities of fat-rich snacks and weak coffee were consumed in a futile attempt to relieve the monotony.
Later that evening the assembled mass of troops were shown a film of what soldiers should expect to experience after arriving home from a war zone. The film began with how the average soldier assumed he might be greeted by a wife he hadn’t seen in three months, a scantily clad wife dressed in a negligee gagging for sex. And then there was the reality: a wife who’s been stuck at home for the last three months, been driven mad by the kids, who was more likely to say: ‘Right, you look after them now. I’m going out with my mates.’ It got a lot of laughs but everyone got the message.
While Dave and Lewis willed the clock on the wall of the ‘departure lounge’ to speed up, I was almost overcome by a deep sense of impending dread and the grim surroundings didn’t improve my mood. The hanging around and waiting prior to boarding the flight was typical RAF bullshit and bordering on spiteful. It was as though someone really resented sending soldiers home and, to make matters worse, that day wasted waiting to fly out counted as one of the R & R days. In the long hours I arranged for Lee Ridgway and Stu Dickson, two fellow ATOs, to pick me up at the airport. Both knew my marriage was in trouble and realised that if they weren’t there to meet me no one would be.
Finally the moment of departure had come, a civilian aircraft had been chartered to fly from Bastion to Cyprus and then to Heathrow. It was just before midnight and although the soldiers were exhausted by the endless waiting around there was an end of term atmosphere on board the plane. Everyone but me cheered as the engines roared into life and the plane accelerated into the empty black sky. Bastion, the one place on the planet where I had felt comfortable and relaxed, faded away into the dark.
After the aircraft departed Afghan airspace the captain announced that it was now safe to remove body armour and helmets. The troops cheered and cheered again when beer started to be served, just a can, but my mood refused to lighten. During the long flight home I kept my thoughts to myself, head plugged into my iPod trying to hide from the world of shit waiting for me.
When we reached Cyprus the aircraft flew over beautiful, white, sandy beaches with couples and families playing in the sea. It was another world occupied by people who had no knowledge of a bloody war being waged a couple of thousand miles away while they were sunbathing and eating ice creams. Happy couples, women and blokes on hen and stag weekends, lapped up the sun and cheap package tours whi
le young men were being blown to pieces fighting to, supposedly, protect their freedom and they knew nothing about it. I felt a surge of anger as I stared out of the window.
Twelve hours later the aircraft landed at Heathrow where 400 soldiers, still dusty from the Helmand deserts, were afforded a certain celebrity status as they marched through the terminal to cheering friends and relatives.
I said goodbye to Dave and Lewis and walked through arrivals to the grinning faces of Stu and Lee, and finally at that moment it almost felt good to be home. I hugged them both and almost immediately they started taking the piss out of me for losing loads of weight courtesy of the Afghan diet, the odd bout of diarrhoea and cutting around Helmand with 50kg on my back. For the next ten minutes or so we stood there chatting, catching up on gossip and having a laugh.
During the drive home the conversation turned to Afghan, the devices and whether I had any further news on what had happened to Dan. Then Stu, in his thick Scottish brogue, ventured into the area we had all been avoiding.
‘So what’s happening?’
‘With what?’ I replied.
‘With home.’
‘It’s been difficult,’ I said with mild understatement. ‘The marriage is on life support, we hardly talk any more and when we do most of the conversation is about our son.’
It was probably the confirmation they had been expecting and the chat died away for a few minutes before Stu announced that he had booked a couple of bed and breakfast rooms in Blackpool for the middle weekend of R & R.
‘Brilliant,’ I said, ‘a weekend with the lads, that’ll be something to look forward to.’ My spirits felt slightly lifted.
‘Sorry, mate, the girls are coming as well.’
During my time in Germany and after our son was born my wife and I separated a couple of times when things were bad but always came back together for my son’s sake. Part of me hoped that might happen again.
We first met in 1998 when I was home on leave from Catterick and she was working as a clerical assistant at my mum’s company. I was aged nineteen and she was a bit younger. We started seeing each other and the relationship became what people call ‘serious’. I passed my Ammunition Technician’s course and was posted to Fallingbostel in Germany. We continued our relationship at a distance, which appeared to work when my tour of duty in Germany was extended for another three years, and it was at that point that I fell into the same trap as so many young soldiers. After going out for a while we were now going to be separated. But we could stay together if we were married and so it was during a wet afternoon in Weston-super-Mare that I made a proposal of marriage while sitting in a Lidl car park after having secretly bought an engagement ring from a cheap high street jewellery shop. Within a few weeks a date had been set, a venue had been booked. From memory my overriding emotion at the time was ‘Fuck me, that was quick.’
By the age of twenty-three I was shacked up in a grotty three-bedroom Army quarter and about as unprepared for married life as was possible. By contrast my wife revelled in the ‘slippers by the fire’ aspect of marital bliss and almost immediately I began missing going out with my mates. She wanted kids, I was still growing up and wanted to enjoy life. The marriage was a car crash waiting to happen.
All too soon we were in Kineton and the car pulled up outside my house. Stu and Lee said they would wait with my kit while I said my hellos.
As I walked through the garden, I could see her silhouette in the kitchen. My heart rate increased and I found myself half hoping that she would welcome me with open arms. I knocked on the door rather than using my own key and was greeted with the smallest of smiles. We hugged and kissed, but only on the cheek, and exchanged pleasantries. It was perfectly polite but nothing more. There was friendship but no passion, no love. But my spirits soared when I saw my son and my dog Sabot. I hugged them both and felt emotional about something apart from death and injury for the first time in months.
A few minutes later Lee and Stu sheepishly appeared at the back door of the house, said a quick hello to my wife and dumped my bags in the kitchen before heading off. An awkward silence filled the room for a few minutes before she told me that it was my son’s feeding time and she disappeared into another room leaving me and my bags stranded in the kitchen wondering what was going to happen next.
‘Jesus, I miss Afghan,’ I muttered to myself. In the world’s biggest shithole I had a purpose. In my own house I felt unwanted and useless.
I went to the bedroom and began unpacking, slowly, not knowing whether I should be using a spare bedroom. Did she want me in the same bed? Nothing felt right or comfortable. I went to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face and looked in the mirror. This was meant to be my R & R – the time when I could rest, clear my head and go back to Afghan refreshed and with the best possible chance of surviving the next three months.
Downstairs I sheepishly asked whether I could feed my boy. It felt as though I hadn’t seen him for years although it had actually been around twelve weeks. He recognised me but probably not as his father. He had grown so much and it suddenly struck me that I was missing out hugely on his life and development.
The small talk between me and my wife was stilted and awkward and only seemed to emphasise the unbridgeable gap that had grown between us. Later that evening my son went to sleep and an awful silence descended.
‘How long does he sleep for?’ I asked, almost immediately regretting the question given that as his father it’s something I should know.
‘A couple of hours, depends,’ she replied.
‘OK, shall I take the dog for a walk?’
‘That would be nice.’
Just about every other soldier on the flight would have been dreaming of that exact moment: away for three months, kids asleep, a chance to catch up on some shagging but instead I was walking the dog, on my own, on a dark empty street inside an Army housing estate.
For the next few days we carefully skirted around each other, avoiding intimacy and each other’s personal space. The weekend in Blackpool loomed ever more closely. My wife’s parents had agreed to look after our son but there was no sense that the marriage was salvageable.
I thought constantly about Afghan, how the war was progressing and what I was going to do when I returned. The war was on the TV news, with the focus being on casualties, but my wife never asked me once what it was like and to be honest I was pleased she didn’t.
The Blackpool weekend finally arrived and although we were staying in a cheap, tacky hotel close to the sea and the amusement arcades, I was delighted, until I walked into the bedroom and was confronted by the double bed. We’d slept in the same bed at home but we’d also had our son and the dog to occupy our time. Now it was just the two of us. I felt as though I was being punished for some unknown crime.
The six of us sat down for a tense dinner where the chat was polite but stilted. Then it was off to an Australian bar, which I had hoped would be the highlight of the evening but my wife wasn’t happy. She had barely said a word all night. I took her to one side and asked if we could have a chat.
‘Look, we are going to be here for a couple of days so maybe we should make an effort for the other guys and put our differences aside, what do you think?’ She just stared at me. I’m not sure if it was the way I came across or if she had just given up, but she walked off without saying a word and the two other wives followed.
My mates were obviously concerned.
‘What’s up, mate?’ Stu asked.
‘Nothing, mate, just a domestic,’ I sighed. The girls had decided to go their own way and so we began having a laugh and getting pissed, exactly what I needed. We bumped into our other halves in a couple of bars and on one occasion I tried to make casual chit-chat but my wife was having none of it and completely blanked me.
Later that evening we arrived back at the hotel. Stu rushed up to his room while I chatted to Lee in the bar as we had one last drink.
Stu reappeared looking slightly awkward:
‘We’re sleeping in the same room tonight, mate. My wife and yours are shacking up.’
‘What? Don’t be silly. We can stay in the same room as each other. Let’s not ruin the evening.’ I was more concerned about ruining Stu’s night than anything else and thought I should try to reason with my wife. But my pleas fell on deaf ears.
I spent the night with Stu feeling that I would have been better off spending my R & R in Bastion hanging round the NAAFI and watching films on my bunk.
The following day we met up on the seafront for breakfast. I went over to my wife and hoped that last night could be put behind us but I was wrong. She refused to speak to me.
‘Fuck this,’ I said loud enough for everyone to hear and stormed off.
The guys ran after me and tried to get me to come back but I was furious and my mood wasn’t helped by a severe hangover.
‘I’m done with it, mate. This was meant to be a weekend away for all of us and it’s shit. It’s over.’
The drive home to Telford was torturous and not a single word was spoken or a glance exchanged. We collected our son on the way, which softened the atmosphere, but only slightly. When we got to the house I went straight to the bedroom and moved all my kit into the spare room, where I slept for the rest of the week.
On the last day of my R & R, just after I finished packing my bags and explaining to my son that I wouldn’t see him for a while I turned to my wife. ‘Look, I don’t want a row before I get on the plane,’ I said softly, ‘but it’s obvious we can’t let this situation hang over our heads while I’m away – it’s not fair on either of us.’
She looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘I think we’re finished.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think we are.’
Neither of us tried to save what was left of our marriage. We both knew it had run its course.
‘So where does that leave us?’ she added.
‘I’ll move my kit out when I return from Afghan.’
Painting the Sand Page 16