by M. R. Hall
For my mother, Rebecca.
Thanks for everything.
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ONE
August 2014
Anna Roberts felt herself blushing as she handed the shop assistant the crumpled notes and assorted coins she had been carefully saving all summer. Her shame wasn’t at buying a set of black silk lingerie, but at spending so much precious money on herself. Her husband, Lee, was a private soldier, and his meagre salary was barely enough to keep body and soul together. Most of Anna’s clothes came from the town’s weekly market or its many charity shops, and she relied on the second-hand stall run by the Regiment’s Wives and Girlfriends Club to dress their three-year-old daughter, Leanne. The cash she had just parted with would have fed them for a fortnight.
Tucking her purchases into the plain carrier bag she had brought with her, Anna reassured herself with the thought that, when he shortly returned from a six-month tour in Afghanistan, the last thing Lee would be thinking of when he saw her new outfit was the expense. With a little luck, before too long they would be celebrating her getting pregnant again. Then they would be a proper family – the kind she had longed for throughout her short and lonely childhood.
As she set off on the mile-long walk back up the hill to Highcliffe Camp, Anna felt her guilt dissolve and her spirits lift. She had nothing left for the bus fare and it would be yesterday’s reheated leftovers for tea, but her agonizing wait was nearly over.
The men of C Company were due home in five days’ time. The tension throughout the small garrison town of Highcliffe was increasing by the minute. Mixed with the collective sense of apprehension there was also great excitement. C Company was the last of the regiment and the very last of the British Army to be returning from front-line service in Helmand. After nearly thirteen years, the military campaign was over. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, there was no one left to fight. Another enemy in a foreign land would no doubt appear soon enough, but just for the moment the country was at peace and its servicemen safe.
Previous homecomings had been celebrated with a tea party in the officers’ mess, but this time the occasion was going to be a little more lavish. The returning soldiers would parade along the High Street before joining their families for an outdoor picnic on the regimental playing field. After a rainy summer, everyone was praying for good weather.
As president of the WAGs Club, Melanie Norton was in charge of organizing the festivities. She had only recently turned thirty and her husband, now a major, was barely three years older, but she felt like a mother to the C Company wives and girlfriends, most of whom, like their partners, were in their early twenties or even younger. Melanie’s headquarters were in the hall next to St Mary’s, the regimental church that stood inside the front gates of Highcliffe Camp. It was chiefly used as a volunteer-run day nursery for preschoolers, but for the past week it had also doubled as an office, workshop and kitchen for Melanie and her team of helpers. Against a shrill background of crying babies and shrieking toddlers, they had painted banners and glued together endless yards of paper streamers that would decorate the marquee. Melanie had often thought that she would make a good army officer herself. With the help of a spreadsheet, she had allocated every member of her team a list of tasks to complete and dishes to make. Everything was planned down to the last sandwich. Besides everything else she had to do between now and the men arriving home, Melanie had also volunteered to produce three hundred cupcakes.
Melanie was no stranger to homecomings. She had never known a life away from the army. Her father had been an officer in the Paratroop Regiment, who through a combination of single-mindedness and exceptional bravery had risen to the rank of brigadier. His advancement had come at the cost of frequent moves and the family never being able to put down permanent roots. Melanie had hoped that her adult life would be more settled and that she wouldn’t have to live with the constant fear that her husband might not come home. The opposite had happened. During the ten years of their marriage, Christopher had completed nine six-month tours of duty: five to Afghanistan and four to Iraq. Three and a half years in combat. Although she tried hard to convince herself otherwise, their two daughters, Emily and Hannah, aged nine and seven, hardly knew him.
This time, Melanie thought to herself as she painted the last ‘E’ on the welcome home banner, she would find the courage to tell Chris that she wanted things to change. Her brother-in-law had an opening at his insurance brokerage in Bristol and was prepared to offer a salary that would almost match what the army was paying. Plus, there was the opportunity for regular bonuses. If Christopher could go toe to toe with Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban in Helmand, Melanie reasoned, selling a few insurance policies surely wouldn’t pose him many problems.
Give him a day or two to adjust to home, then plant the seed. That was her plan, and this time she was determined to stick to it.
‘Would you mind giving me a hand hanging this up to dry?’ Melanie addressed her question to Sarah Tanner, a pretty nineteen-year-old, nearly eight months pregnant, who had spent the morning making elaborate table decorations out of coloured tissue paper. She was quite an artist.
‘Sure,’ Sarah said distractedly. Like most of the women working around the long row of trestle tables, she had been lost in thought.
‘Are you all right?’ Melanie asked as they each took hold of one end of the banner.
Sarah attempted a nod and a smile, but tears welled in her eyes.
Melanie knew exactly how she felt. The last few days of tour were almost the most painful.
‘Why don’t you come outside with me for a moment?’
They left the banner on the table and headed towards the door, Melanie looping her arm inside Sarah’s as they stepped around two boisterous three-year-olds who had escaped from the roped-off nursery area in pursuit of a ball. An older woman, Kathleen Lyons, whose grandson was one of the youngest members of C Company, jumped up from her chair and came after them.
‘Love . . .’ Kathleen called out to Sarah. She dipped a hand into her cardigan pocket and brought out a small bundle of coupons. ‘I was going to share these out later. Have some.’
Sarah sniffed a thank you and gratefully took a few. Kathleen worked at a local supermarket and eagerly hoovered up the money-off vouchers that careless customers left at her till. She couldn’t let them go to waste, so made a point of sharing them amongst the WAGs.
‘Wedding plans going OK?’ Kathleen inquired kindly.
‘Great, thanks,’ Sarah said, wiping away more tears. ‘I just hope I’ll fit into my dress. I won’t at this rate.’
‘You’ll look beautiful,’ Kathleen said.
Melanie agreed. Sarah turned heads everywhere she went, and her fiancé, Kenny Green, was the envy of his comrades.
Melanie and Kathleen exchanged a look as Sarah dried her eyes. Both knew how difficult things were at home for the young woman who was currently living with her future in-laws in their small house just outside the camp. Paul Green, her fiancé’s father, had struggled with depression since being invalided out of the regiment a few years before, and Rachel, his mother, was a drama queen who broke all the unspoken rules by voicing her morbid fears over her son’s safety at every opportunity. Neither Melanie nor Kathleen could tolerate Rachel’s company for more than a few minutes at a time. They didn’t like to think what a strain it must be for Sarah. It was also no secret that Rachel Green wasn’t looking forward to seeing her only son get married in a fortnight’s time. There wasn’t a young woman alive who would have been good enough for her precious Kenny.
‘Problems at home?’ Melanie asked, as they continued towards the exit.
Sarah nodded.
‘I know it’s tough, but I really think you ought to have it all out with Rachel before Kenny gets back. The last thing you want is him coming home to an atmosphere that’ll spoil the wedding.’
‘I’ll try,’ Sarah said.
As they neared the door it flew open and Anna Roberts burst in.
‘Have you heard?’ Anna said, her eyes wide with excitement, ‘I just bumped into the padre—’
‘Heard what?’ Sarah asked with a note of alarm.
Anna could barely contain her excitement. She addressed all the women in the room at once. ‘Listen, everyone.’ She clapped her hands to gain their attention. ‘I’ve got some news.’ Concerned faces stared back at her. ‘Don’t worry – it’s good news. Colonel Hastings has said they can skip decompression. They’ll fly into Cyprus in forty-eight hours and come straight home from there with no delay. They’ll be in Highcliffe on Thursday morning – two days early.’
As the spontaneous cheer went up, all Melanie could think of was how little time she had left to decorate the marquee and ice three hundred cupcakes.
TWO
Private Pete Lyons, or ‘Skippy’, as he was known to everyone, including Major Norton, felt like he’d taken more than his fair share of stick during the six-month tour. With only two days to go before they were airlifted out of this hellhole, it was adding insult to injury to pick on him again. The platoon had run out of the plastic bags that had to serve as latrines over a fortnight ago. Since then, they’d been using a hole in the ground, and it was Skippy’s unpleasant job to fill in the old one and dig another two yards to the right.
It was nine o’clock at night but still hot as a furnace, and except for the men manning the guns on the four sangar towers, the platoon were under four big tarps – one for each section – at the far end of the post behind a screen of mosquito netting. Skippy had used up the last of his repellent during the first half of the tour, and since then his body had become a lunar landscape of livid, swollen bites that were being added to by the second. He would have traded his right arm for a squirt of DEET.
‘Two days. Just two more lousy days,’ he said out loud to himself as he hacked at the hard-baked earth.
Skippy’s latest offence was fainting from exhaustion during that day’s predawn patrol. What did Sergeant Bryant expect from a short-arse eighteen-year-old lad who had started the tour weighing less than ten stone? In forty degrees, even the big guys struggled under the weight of a rifle, ammo, med pack and bulletproof Kevlar vest. They’d already covered five miles when they came under fire from a couple of Tali fighters on the nearby hillside and had to sprint across a patch of open ground. He’d told the sergeant he could barely walk, let alone run, but Bryant’s answer to everything was just to shout louder. It had served him right he was nearly shot. Maybe next time he’d take some notice.
Except hopefully there wasn’t going to be a next time. The rumour that had been spreading throughout the platoon that afternoon was that Major Norton had issued the command that patrols were to cease. There was nothing more to be gained. The local villagers knew the British soldiers were moving out on Wednesday and the Tali up on the mountain probably did, too. Skippy didn’t understand much about politics and cared even less, but he knew that the moment they left Helmand things would return to exactly the same as they had been before. Maybe some girls were going to school up in Kabul, but they certainly weren’t being educated in the nearby village of Shalan-Gar. You saw them washing clothes at the stream some mornings, all covered up in their brown burkhas, but aside from that you never saw a female out of doors. Not even a face at the window of their mud houses.
In Skippy’s opinion the whole place was a madhouse beyond any kind of help they could offer. When the platoon had arrived in February, Major Norton told them that they had received only two orders: befriend villagers to the north; kill or capture Taliban to the south. They’d done plenty of killing, but making friends had proved harder. Back in March they had received a truckload of potatoes with instructions to persuade the local farmers to plant them instead of opium poppies. The villagers put the potatoes in the ground but didn’t waste a single drop of water trying to raise them. They just let them dry up and die. Meanwhile, their underground wells remained full of water ready for the poppy crop they would plant that autumn.
A madhouse. Flies, stink, bombs and bullets. Still, in a couple of days he’d be out of here and back at his nan’s flat in Highcliffe. Compared with this place, those four small rooms were paradise.
From out of the darkness, Sergeant Bryant’s booming voice hit him with the force of an exploding mortar round. ‘Put your bloody back into it, lad! Scratching’s no bloody good! Dig, you scabby little runt! Dig!’
Skippy redoubled his efforts. He was still hurting from the last time Bryant had cuffed him and didn’t want to repeat the experience.
‘Two more days, Skip. Two more lousy days.’
Bryant’s yell jolted Private Kenny Green out of the doze into which he’d slipped while keeping watch from the north-east sangar. It must have been the slug of hooch that had made him sleepy. He had known it was a bad idea but the lads hadn’t given him much choice. Half a cup after six months on the wagon had been enough to go straight to his head, and now he could barely keep his eyes open.
Discipline had started to slip as the end of the tour approached. Along with mobile phones, alcohol was strictly forbidden, but some of the boys had secretly managed to concoct some foul, mouldy-tasting brew by fermenting bits of fruit they had picked up on patrol in water bottles buried beneath their sleeping rolls. If Bryant were to find out, he wouldn’t bother with official discipline: justice would be brutal and immediate. Kenny shuddered to think what form it would take. But although everyone complained about Bryant ruling with a rod of iron, at least you knew where you stood with him. And in a strange way, he made you feel secure. It was hard to be afraid of the enemy when your sergeant didn’t know what fear was. Each day began with him shouting in your ear and ended pretty much the same way.
Nevertheless, Kenny had felt an almost mutinous atmosphere building all afternoon. It had kicked off when Lee Roberts let slip that he’d overheard Major Norton telling Bryant he didn’t think they should bother with any more patrols. According to Lee, Bryant had objected violently. The twenty-eight-man platoon had carried out daily patrols for six months, suffering one fatality and losing several more to serious injuries. After each setback they’d kept on going as before. Even the day after Billy Dalton had been left screaming in the middle of the road with his guts spilling out while a firefight raged around him, they’d trudged out of the gate at four a.m. with Bryant in the lead as usual. Staying inside the dirt walls of their compound on the final day would have felt to Bryant like an admission of defeat.
The mood among the rest of the platoon couldn’t have been more different. They had all had enough adventure for one tour. Thoughts of home had started creeping into their minds and taken the edge off their concentration. It had happened to Kenny while out on patrol that morning. He had been walking at the head of B Sec
tion following the wadi leading west from Shalan-Gar towards the next settlement across the valley. Some Tali had booby-trapped the dried-out river bed several times in recent months, but Kenny’s thoughts had wandered off to Sarah and their wedding that was due to take place in just over a fortnight’s time. Or more precisely, their wedding night. He could almost feel her soft skin and her breath on his neck.
Kenny had been less than ten feet away from the trigger wire when Lee spotted it. He had tried to tell himself that he would have seen it in time, but deep down, he knew that he wouldn’t have. Following his near miss, his legs shook, his heart raced and he had started spotting imaginary gunmen behind every tree and rock. Later, when they came under fire and Skippy had collapsed out in the open, he had come close to freezing with panic. For once, Kenny had been grateful for Bryant’s yelling. With incoming rounds spitting up the dirt all around them, the sergeant ordered them to take cover while he dragged the unconscious Skippy clear.
There was no question that Bryant was a bastard, but if he had learned one thing in Helmand, it was that bastards made good soldiers.
Kenny stifled another yawn and scanned the surrounding fields and orchards beyond the minefield that surrounded the camp’s perimeter. The sky was moonless. With virtually no ambient light, his night-vision goggles allowed him to see only to a distance of approximately one hundred yards. All was still. Not even a rat crossed his line of sight. After several minutes his eyelids once again started to droop, but suddenly, and without immediately knowing why, he jolted awake. Then he saw it: at the edge of his range of sight, something moved behind a tree. Human or animal? He couldn’t be sure. He crouched low over the sangar’s heavy machine gun and trained the sights on the spot where he had seen whatever it was. It was happening again: his heart was beating faster and faster. Sweat trickled down his face. He waited, tensed, his finger trembling on the trigger. He felt sick and dizzy. An angry voice raged inside his head: Pull yourself together. You’re nearly home. Nearly a minute passed. Then, in a split second, something streaked out from behind the tree. Kenny loosed off a burst of fire. White-hot streaks tore through the blackness. He refocused, breathing hard. Whatever it had been was now dead, lying in several pieces amidst the scrub.