by M. R. Hall
‘What the hell was that, Green?’ Bryant shouted up from somewhere below.
‘I think it was a dog, Sarge,’ Kenny called back.
‘Waste any more rounds on a dumb animal and you’ll be scooping it up for breakfast. You got that?’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘Yes, Sarge.’ Kenny heard several of the lads imitating him in exaggerated effeminate voices. Some of the others laughed. They sounded like they’d been drinking. It made Kenny uneasy. If Bryant found out, there would be hell to pay.
Private Lee Roberts stretched out on his thin sleeping mat and mentally ticked off another hour. Forty-six more until the Chinook would fly in and carry them back to Bastion. There they would board the RAF Tristar that would take them home. He scarcely dared believe the end was so close. Aside from seeing Anna and Leanne again, what he longed for most was a comfortable bed. That and some real food – he didn’t care what kind, just so long as it didn’t come out of a ration pack. Anna was always so careful about making sure they ate well at home – she would be horrified to learn that he’d eaten nothing but tinned and rehydrated food for six months. Not a single fresh carrot or lettuce leaf had passed his lips.
Running water. That was another thing he was looking forward to. He had almost forgotten what it was like to turn on a tap to fill a glass or step under a shower. At the post, each man was allocated two litres of water a day. This had to cover cooking, drinking and washing. Needless to say, most went without washing. Within days of arrival they had all smelt like tramps, but after a week or two they had stopped noticing. Everyone stank the same. Now and then they had sluiced down in one of the two springs that bubbled out of the ground to the north, but both of them had dried up in early July. The villagers had offered to sell them water but Major Norton hadn’t allowed it. The risk of poisoning was too great. At one point during the height of summer they had run so short that they had set up evaporation stills to recycle their urine. It was just like the survival shows on TV. But that was the British Army for you. Everything cut to the bone. If an American soldier had turned up he’d have been appalled. Lee had heard that even at their most isolated posts, the Yanks had chemical latrines and refrigerated Coke dispensers.
As evening turned into night, the mood under the tarps was finally shifting from restless to subdued. Some of the lads were playing cards, and the ones who had been boisterous earlier were mostly drifting off to sleep or reading one of the battered paperbacks that got shared around the platoon by torchlight. The relentless banter had been replaced by the steady drum of crickets. Lee checked his watch. It was heading towards eleven p.m. If any of them were going on patrol tomorrow Bryant would have to announce it soon. He hadn’t sounded a happy man when Lee heard him talking with Major Norton earlier that afternoon: ‘The effing raggies will think they’ve bested us, sir.’
‘There’s no point taking unnecessary risks for pride alone,’ Norton had said.
‘It’s not a matter of pride, sir. Surely it’s our job? I wasn’t aware we’d been given a holiday.’
His tone had come close to insubordinate, but Norton had chosen not to cross swords. ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ he had said diplomatically, ‘see what next door’s planning.’
Next door was 3 Platoon, who was stationed four kilometres to their east. It was commanded by a young lieutenant, James Gallagher, who in any event would take his orders from Norton. Fully aware that he was being fobbed off, Bryant had marched away from the conversation with a face like thunder. Lee had taken care to scoot out of his way as he strode past. The man was obsessed. He seemed almost disappointed to be going home. Perhaps that was his problem, Lee speculated. Bryant was forty years old and had been in the army for more than half his life. As he often reminded them, he had completed more than a dozen tours of active duty in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. Combat was all he knew. All he lived for. It was like a drug.
The voices around him gradually fell silent. Torches switched off one by one. Lee felt his muscles slacken as he descended into the pleasant, hazy state between wakefulness and sleep. He pictured Anna and Leanne waiting for him on the parade ground. He imagined hurrying towards them, kissing Anna on the lips and scooping Leanne up in his arms. And at that moment he realized he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them again. He’d done his five years, proved all he had ever wanted to prove. After all he’d endured in Helmand he could hold his head up anywhere in Civvy Street. He had always known the time would come for a change of direction and this felt like the moment. When he got home, he promised himself that he’d look into training as a mechanic. Yes, that felt right. Something practical. A steady, hands-on job. Content that he had a plan, Lee drifted off to sleep.
‘Right, you lazy sods! Attention!’
Lee jolted awake after what felt like only seconds after closing his eyes. A glance at his watch told him less than an hour had passed.
‘Roberts! Get up!’
Bryant flicked a boot into Lee’s ribs and doled out the same treatment to several other malingerers. Lee scrambled to his feet grimacing in pain, but knowing not to show it. He stood to attention at the foot of his bedroll, arms pressed tight to his sides.
‘Look at this bloody shambles,’ Bryant yelled, kicking over mess tins and other stray possessions that lay scattered on the ground. ‘Call yourselves soldiers? Dossers, that’s what you are. A bunch of filthy, pikey dossers.’ He stopped in front of Skippy and glared down at him. ‘Are you looking forward to going home, son?’
‘Yes, Sarge.’ There was a tremor in the boy’s voice.
‘Why’s that, then? So you can live like even more of a pig?’ He nodded to Skippy’s open pack, with its contents spilling onto the ground. ‘Your nan likes living with pigs, does she?’
‘No, Sarge.’
‘Well, that’s what she’s got coming to her, hasn’t she? A shitty little pig.’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
Bryant picked the pack up in one hand and, while continuing to glare into Skippy’s terrified face, shook its contents onto the floor.
‘Kit inspection six a.m. All of you. One button out of place, you’ll all be on a charge. Got it?’
The whole platoon answered in unison. ‘Yes, Sarge.’
Without another word, Bryant turned on his heel and marched to the tarpaulin shelter he occupied next to Major Norton’s at the end of the post.
‘Thanks a lot, Skip,’ Danny Marsh called across as the men returned grumbling to their beds.
Skippy didn’t reply. It had been a long day. A long six months. As he knelt down to gather up his scattered possessions, he couldn’t stop his eyes from welling up with tears.
Up on the sangar, Kenny Green was again losing his battle to stay awake. He was on guard duty until two a.m. Not long to go. For several minutes he dozed, slumped over his machine gun, until a mosquito bit him on the back of the neck. He jerked back to consciousness and crushed the insect under his palm. As he settled and refocused, he thought he saw something flit behind a tree out in the orchard. Another dog? Or was he imagining things? He peered out in the gloom, his finger tightening on the trigger. He waited to see it again.
All was quiet.
Nothing stirred.
THREE
Major Christopher Norton woke to the sound of his sergeant doing his vigorous morning exercises in the ‘prison gym’ they had set up a few yards from their primitive quarters. Lengths of wood lashed across empty oil drums served as push-up bars. Jerrycans filled with water served as weights. It was ten minutes before six a.m. Norton hadn’t slept past five for the entire tour and the extra hour had left him feeling sluggish. He lay still for a moment, enjoying the strange and luxurious feeling of not having to ready himself for a patrol. The day ahead would be tedious, but at least it wouldn’t involve stepping outside the walls. His thoughts drifted briefly to Melanie and the girls, but he hauled them back again and tried to decide how he would occupy the men during their final hours before departure
. A football tournament, perhaps? It would soak up some of their nervous energy. Later on, he would give the talk he always delivered at the end of the tour. He would try to explain what he thought they had achieved here in their little corner of Helmand, then attempt to place it in the big picture, giving them something to go home feeling proud about.
Norton had pushed his platoon hard during the past six months and they had taken more casualties than he would have liked, but he couldn’t fault their bravery or their loyalty. They had done as well as HQ could have expected of them. The company Norton commanded was leaving Helmand with the local Taliban severely if not fatally weakened. By their own admissions, the local communities felt far safer now than they had before the British arrived. And if all the reports he had heard were correct, the units of the Afghan National Army who would shortly be taking their place had been licked into decent shape by their British and American trainers. Barring disasters, the local population had every chance of enjoying a peaceful future.
Bryant’s voice resounded around the post like a thunderclap. ‘Right, you greasy little buggers, let see what you’ve got. ‘’Ten – shun!’
The kit inspection. Norton had forgotten that Bryant had arranged to haul the men through the wringer one last time. Some mornings he felt as exasperated and bullied by his sergeant as they must. The man’s energy and appetite for confrontation was superhuman.
Norton dragged himself to his feet and sought out a razor. Down to his last few cups of water, he couldn’t afford to waste any on ablutions. He scraped the blade over his dry stubble while trying to blot out Bryant’s yelling.
‘Look at you, bloody shambles. And where the hell’s the runt?’ The sergeant’s high-pitched yell made Norton wince.
‘Don’t know, Sarge,’ answered a voice Norton recognized as belonging to Private Roberts.
‘What do you mean you don’t bloody know?’ Bryant yelled at the top of his lungs: ‘Ly-ons!’ His voice grew even louder: ‘You’d better show yourself, boy!’
Norton set down his razor and pulled back the flap of tarpaulin to see Bryant striding out into the centre of the post and scanning the sangars. Each of the sentries called down that they were alone. Apart from these four towers there was nowhere else in the post for a man to hide. The perimeter walls were twenty feet high and constructed of Hesco bags – collapsible wire cages lined with tough fabric and filled with dirt – the only gap in which was the locked steel gate at the single entrance.
‘Lyons!’ Bryant’s scream could have been heard on the far side of the valley.
There was no reply. The sergeant span round and shouted at the twenty-one men still standing stiffly to attention next to their beds. ‘You bastards better not be taking the piss.’ Without waiting for an answer, he decided they were. ‘Where is he? You’ve got five seconds or I’ll be sending every one of you little shits home in plaster.’
No one doubted that he meant it.
‘We’re not having you on, sir,’ Lee Roberts piped up. ‘Last time I saw him was at lights out. He was sorting out his kit.’ He nodded towards Skippy’s pack, which lay in its usual place at the end of the row. Its various straps and buckles were neatly fastened.
‘Who saw him last?’ Norton called out. He came towards them buttoning his shirt, anxious to calm the situation before it got any more heated. The mood Bryant had been in for the last few days, he didn’t trust him not to crack a few skulls.
The men exchanged looks.
Norton threw his sergeant a disarming smile and assumed control. ‘Look, boys, I don’t mind if this is an end-of-term prank, and if it is, you got us fair and square. Well done.’
After a long moment of silence, Private Dean Paget spoke up. ‘I don’t think it is a joke, sir. At least, no one told me about it.’
‘All right, if this is a joke, now’s the time to fess up,’ Norton said. ‘No recriminations. No hard feelings.’ He ignored Bryant’s pained expression.
Again, silence. Norton studied the men’s faces. No smirks. No disguised smiles. No suppressed laughter. The only expressions he saw were of fear and concern.
‘Lance Corporal, you bunk next to him – when did you see him last?’
‘He was still getting his kit sorted when I went to sleep, sir,’ Jim Warman said.
‘In the dark?’
‘With a head torch.’
‘You didn’t see him turn in?’
‘No, sir.’
Norton looked down at Skippy’s bedroll. There was no telling if it had been slept on or not. With the nights so hot, none of them used their sleeping bags. Skippy’s was stowed in its compression bag and strapped to the side of his pack. There was no sign of his boots, though. An uneasy feeling stole over the major. He realized that all he knew about the youngest member of his platoon was that back home his only close relation was his grandmother. They had never had much in the way of a one-to-one: Skippy preferred to talk to his mates. What he did know was that he was a popular member of the platoon who more than made up in bravery for what he lacked in size. Skippy was always the one who volunteered to scout ahead while out on patrol and had never flinched in a skirmish. The collapse he had suffered the day before was the only minor blot on an otherwise pristine record.
‘He didn’t say anything to any of you?’ Norton asked.
Heads shook.
‘He was looking forward to going home?’
There were nods and mumbled confirmations. Expressions were growing more serious, confirming Norton’s suspicion that this was no practical joke.
‘He couldn’t have got out, sir,’ Bryant said. ‘It’s impossible. And why would he?’
‘He’s evidently not here,’ Norton said gravely. ‘Check his kit, Sergeant.’
‘Sir?’
‘His kit.’
Norton could think of nothing else to do. He was as confused by Skippy’s absence as he was perplexed. Despite the unlikelihood of being able to scale the walls unseen, there was the problem of navigating the minefields that surrounded the post.
Bryant began by turning over Skippy’s bedroll. There was nothing underneath. Next he unstrapped his pack and spread the contents on the ground. He poked through the spare clothes, water bottles, wash kit and mess tins and immediately spotted what was missing.
‘No night-vision goggles, sir. No bayonet or pistol, either.’
‘What about his rifle? Roberts—’ Norton nodded to Lee Roberts, who stepped away from his bed and checked along the row of assault rifles stacked up against the Hesco wall at the rear of the sleeping area.
‘Still here, sir,’ Roberts replied.
‘Everyone else’s?’
Roberts counted. ‘All there, sir.’
Norton nodded. ‘Stand easy.’
Feet shuffled and muscles loosened, but the atmosphere among the platoon only grew more tense.
‘Somehow or another, it appears that Private Lyons has left the post during the night,’ Norton said. ‘That can only mean one of you sentries must have seen him or been asleep on the job.’
Kenny Green felt the blood rush to his face. He had spent the second half of his watch from midnight until two a.m. losing an increasingly difficult battle to stay awake.
‘We’ll deal with that issue later,’ Norton said. ‘Now, has anyone got any idea why Skippy would have run off into the night?’
No one spoke.
Norton squared up to the thought that had been lurking in the back of his mind and gave voice to it. ‘I need to know – had anyone noticed him being depressed? Was there anything on his mind? You all know what I’m saying.’
After a long silence, Private Roberts spoke up. ‘I know he felt bad about what happened yesterday, sir. But I don’t see why that would send him over the wall.’
‘Unless he thought he had something to prove,’ Private Paget said.
‘Such as?’ Norton asked.
Paget shrugged his shoulders.
The image that came to Norton’s mind was of the young
man hanging from a tree, unable to cope with the humiliation of having collapsed on patrol. Was it possible that he was far more fragile than any of them had imagined, that they had all misread his cockiness for insecurity?
‘What do you think, Sergeant?’ Norton said quietly.
‘I think someone here knows something, sir,’ Bryant said.
Kenny Green couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘I might have seen something, sir. I was up on the south-west sangar. Something moved out in the orchard. Must have been about one a.m.’
‘A figure?’
‘I couldn’t be sure, sir. It might have been nothing.’
‘Were you alert?’
Kenny Green hung his head. ‘Not too brilliant, sir. I was struggling a bit, to be honest.’
Norton shot Bryant a look. ‘I’ll deal with him later, Sergeant. Proceed with the inspection. We’ll have breakfast, then organize a search party. I’ll put the word out on the radio.’
Norton left Bryant to it and retreated to his shelter from where he contacted the other platoons in the valley over the encrypted Bowman radio. They had a man missing. He was lightly armed and extremely vulnerable. Next he contacted HQ in faraway Camp Bastion and requested to speak to his commanding officer, Colonel Richard Hastings. He was not looking forward to delivering the news.
FOUR
At six forty-five, Norton was in his quarters studying a detailed map of the surrounding area when Bryant came to find him.
‘Ready when you are, sir.’
Norton showed him the grid he had drawn on the map dividing the local terrain into sections each approximately two hundred metres square. ‘We’ll start close and move further out. I’ve spoken to Colonel Hastings at HQ – if we don’t find him within the hour I’m to mobilize a full search the length of the valley. We want to avoid that if possible – no one wants to hand the enemy that sort of publicity on our last day.’