Stand By Stand By

by Chris Ryan

  So we carried on, happy with each other. In the summer of 1990 I went to Africa with the squadron, on team training. We were away two months, but I got back to find everything just the same, and Kath and I carried on where we’d left off. It was only when Saddam invaded Kuwait, and D Squadron was deployed to the Gulf, that things began to go belly-up.

  Leaving was tough. Before we flew out from Brize Norton at the start of January ‘91, Kath and I had some emotional moments trying to plan a future for her and Tim, in case I didn’t come back. The house would be hers, of course, and she would be free to sell it if she wanted. But I told her it would be my wish that she should marry again, and that the kid should be educated as well as she could afford, at some fee-paying school if no good state school was available. Such thoughts brought with them many tears, but we did our best to look the future in the face.

  Next day we were gone. Before the war started I was able to phone Kath from time to time, from the R & R centres established in the desert, and everything was OK. The satellite connections were perfect, and it was like talking to her in the room next door. But once we deployed across the border into Iraq at the end of January there was no chance of further communication, and it wasn’t until the ninth of April, when members of D Squadron were reunited in Cyprus on our way home, that I spoke to her again. And as it turned out, during those ten weeks – in the desert, in hospital, in prison – I’d been through quite a bit.

  On the line to Akrotiri, Kath sounded very much herself – worried about me, lively, loving, full of news about Tim. It was I who had changed.

  Like everyone else I looked forward to getting home; for weeks I’d yearned to be back in England. Yet when I reached Hereford, there was something wrong. I didn’t go straight home. I didn’t want to – couldn’t face it. To my shame, I went out on the piss with a couple of the single lads who lived on the block. All they wanted was to have a few beers and go downtown to see if they could pick up a girl for the night. For me, things weren’t so simple.

  By the time I reached the cottage I wasn’t making much sense. Kath looked terrific – I could see that in an objective sort of way – but she also looked shocked that I had arrived back in such a state. Tim had grown inches and was starting to talk. She’d taught him to say ‘Dad’, and he brought the word out on cue. I should have been bowled over. Instead I felt nothing. It was extraordinary, but I didn’t even feel randy. By then the other guys would have been randy as hell; during the flight they hadn’t been able to stop talking about how they were going to screw their bollocks off the moment the Herc touched the tarmac. I should have been the same, but I didn’t seem to fancy Kath any more. I couldn’t make love to her; I could hardly kiss her on the cheek, or even look her in the eye. As for telling her what had happened to me – I just explained a bit about my arm, and skirted round the rest.

  She was hurt, of course. Although she played it down, she couldn’t conceal her worry and unhappiness. I think she hoped that time would heal the trouble between us, whatever it was, and after a while things would return to normal.

  All along I knew that the fault lay with me, not her, and I tried to say so. But then began the nightmares and the headaches started. I started on the booze – something I’d never much bothered with before – and instead of mending, our relationship went further downhill, until we were making space round each other as we moved about the house, and hardly speaking.

  When I went to the Med Centre in camp for checks on my arm I should have told the doc what was happening. But naturally I didn’t want to reveal what seemed to be weaknesses. Like everyone in the Regiment, I wanted to get sent on operations: that was the whole point of life. To admit one had psychological problems was the surest way of missing some good trip, or even of blighting one’s career completely and being put on the back burner. When the head-shed offered us the services of a shrink, nobody wanted to go near him.

  The Paracetamol was starting to take effect. Slowly my head eased and some of the anxieties fell away. I heard the clock in the living room strike four, and that was all.

  Next day was bright and brilliant, a glorious May morning. When I came into the kitchen, sunlight was already streaming across the table, and Tim’s face, plastered with porridge, was such a sight I couldn’t help smiling. But I felt terrible, hung over from the mixture of drinks that I’d poured down myself the night before.

  As always, Kath had made proper coffee, and, as I got myself a cup, I announced, ‘I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to see the doc.’

  ‘Great!’ Kath’s face lit up. ‘See what he says. It can’t do any harm.’

  ‘That’s right. If I don’t like it, I don’t need to take any notice.’

  I was soon away, driving into town. She’d gone back to her job at the bank in the mornings, and was putting Tim into a tots’ playschool. At lunchtime a friend gave them both a lift home, so all I had to do was drop them off on my way to the camp.

  At Stirling Lines – named after David Stirling, who founded the SAS as a long-range desert group in Africa during World War Two – the usual two MoD Plods in uniform were on the gate. As I drove towards them they recognized me, waved and raised the barrier. In the car-park I found myself next to a mate from D Squadron, Pat Martin, who was just locking his Scorpio.

  ‘Hi, Pat,’ I said. ‘Listen, will you tell Tom that I’m going to the Med Centre? I’ll be up the Squadron later.’

  ‘No bother. Something the matter?’

  ‘Just checking my arm.’

  It was coming up to 8.30. The rest of the guys would already be assembling in the Squadron Interest Room for Prayers – properly, roll-call and morning briefing. I knew that Tom Dawson, the sergeant major, would accept my message, and that I could square him later. One of the Old and Bold, he’d done more than fifteen years in the Regiment, and had seen it all – the tail-end of the Dhofar campaign, the Falklands, the Gulf. In the Falklands he’d been one of the few who survived the Sea King crash. Seventeen members of D and G Squadrons and half a dozen others were killed when the chopper went down in the sea on a cross-decking sortie. He’d told me he too suffered nightmares. He’d been unable to sleep in a dark room with the door shut; if ever he woke to find the door closed he’d leap up in a frenzy. His own experiences had made him sympathetic, and I knew he’d support me.

  I headed straight for the Med Centre, hoping that Tracy Jordan would be on duty. There were two girls who took turns at the front desk, week on, week off. Sheila was small and dumpy, about as lively as a suet pudding, but Tracy was something else. Nearly six feet in her socks, with wild coppery curls tied in a top-knot that made her look even taller, she was all arms and legs, and at twenty-three or -four, still seemed like an overgrown filly. She was quite a well-known figure about camp because she was athletic, and was often to be seen running with a girl friend in the lunch hour. Rumour had it that she was a demon at squash; apart from being fit, she could stand in the centre of the court and scoop the ball out of the corners without having to move very far.

  I knew practically nothing else about her. But I’d often noticed that her eyes carried a hint of suppressed merriment; this, combined with a tendency to make mildly piss-taking remarks, made a lot of the guys fancy her. But she had rumbled the bonk-and-be-off tactics of the Regiment long ago, and stuck to a boyfriend from outside. All the same, reporting sick was less of a drag if Tracy was on duty.

  My luck was in. There she sat at her desk, in a snowy sweatshirt and pale blue jeans. Today the ribbon holding her top-knot was emerald green. Did her eyebrows go up as she saw me come in?

  ‘Sergeant Geordie Sharp!’ she announced in that faintly mocking voice. ‘What can I do for you today?’

  ‘Watch yourself,’ I told her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She wriggled her slim little behind around on her chair in mock indignation.

  ‘Just that,’ I said. ‘I need to see Doc Anderson.’

  ‘Major Anderson’s off. It’s Captain Lester.’r />
  ‘OK then.’

  ‘There’s only one ahead of you. Take a seat. Shouldn’t be long.’

  She rummaged in a filing cupboard for my documents, and handed me the brown manila packet. It didn’t worry me that Anderson was away – I’d never got much change out of him. Maybe this new guy would be better.

  I waited a couple of minutes, then the light above the door changed from red to green and I went in to find a young, fit-looking man with prematurely grey hair cut very short. He took a quick look at the outside of my packet and said, ‘Hello, George.’

  ‘It’s Geordie,’ I told him. ‘My Christian name’s George, but I never use it. Everyone calls me Geordie. My accent and all.’

  ‘OK.’ He gave a twitch of a grin, opened the packet and began to read the papers. ‘Injury to your left arm,’ he said. ‘Compound fractures of the humerus. Pinned and plated in an Iraqi hospital.’

  He pulled out an X-ray, fitted it into the front of a light-box on the wall, and studied it for a moment.

  ‘Is that what’s giving you trouble?’

  ‘No, no. My arm’s fine.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘Sure.’ I pulled up the sleeve of my sweater and laid my arm on the desk. He felt it carefully along the line of the scar and looked back at the X-ray.

  ‘Tender?’

  ‘Not too bad.’

  ‘Can you use it all right?’

  ‘No bother.’

  ‘Turn your hand back and forth . . . open and close your fingers ... . Weights?’

  ‘I’ve started again with light ones. Just building up.’

  ‘I see. How did you do it?’

  ‘Came off my motor bike.’

  ‘Ah!’ He took my wrist and sat silent for a moment, counting my pulse rate. I liked his direct, no-nonsense manner. Then he asked, ‘What’s the matter, then?’

  ‘Headaches,’ I said. ‘They’re getting really bad. And I’m having nightmares that scare the shit out of me.’

  ‘Did you hit your head in the crash?’

  ‘No – not that I know of. My head never gave any trouble at the time. This only started recently.’

  ‘Have you been taking anything?’

  ‘Only the odd aspirin and Paracetamol.’

  ‘You’re sure you haven’t been concocting things out of your med pack? Some of you fellows are buggers for self-help, I know.’

  ‘No, no. I don’t touch any of that.’

  ‘What about booze?’

  ‘Well ...’

  ‘Are you drinking a lot?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Too much.’

  ‘OK.’

  He put me on the couch, brought out his stethoscope and listened to my heart. Then he took my blood pressure with the old arm clamp, looked into my ears and shone lights in my eyes. As he was working he said casually, ‘How did you come to fall off the bike?’

  ‘It was at night. We were 150 kilometres inside Iraq, behind enemy lines, hitting the comms towers and blowing up fibre-optic lines. And we were on the lookout for mobile Scud launchers. That night the squadron was tasked to move up and find a new lying-up position in which to hide the following day. I was recceing forward on a motorbike. The ground was very rough – a lot of rocks and loose gravel, with sudden deep ditches. We started to see lights in the distance ahead – vehicles moving – and we accelerated to cut them off. I dropped into a bloody great hole – never saw it – and the bike came down on top of me. Smashed my arm against a rock.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘If you’re interested?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The guys picked me up and splinted the arm as best they could. Not a pretty sight. One end of the bone was sticking out through the muscle. They put me in the back of a Land Rover and called for a medevac. The head-shed in Saudi was co-ordinating rescue efforts with the Americans. They sent a message to say that a joint operation would be diverted to pick me up. A chopper would come in the following night, to lift me out along with two American casualties.’

  I paused and looked sideways at the doctor. He still seemed to be interested, so I went on. ‘That worked fine. We spent the day lying up in a wadi, and soon after dark the heli picked us up on time, with some SEAL guys riding security. But we’d been flying for no more than ten minutes when we were targeted by a SAM. One moment we were cruising steadily, then suddenly everything went crazy. Sirens blasted off, the chopper began to dive and twist in violent evasive manoeuvres, the pilot fired off his chaff in the hope of decoying the missile – but no luck. Suddenly there was this almighty bang. It felt as if the chopper had been hit sideways like a tennis ball. The next thing I knew there was another terrific impact, and we were on the ground. Tony, one of the SEALs, was dragging me out of the wreckage. When we made a check, we found we were the only two alive. The co-pilot had been decapitated. The pilot had lost both arms. What we couldn’t understand was how the chopper hadn’t caught fire. Soon we saw lights coming at us. Before we could get ourselves together we’d been surrounded by fifty or sixty Iraqis. We could have dropped one or two, but not dozens. So that was us captured.’

  I stopped. I was still lying on my back on the couch, talking up to the ceiling. I seemed to be out of breath. I realized that I’d been speaking faster and faster. I turned my head to the right and looked at the doc again. He was watching me carefully.

  ‘Carry on,’ he said.

  I looked back at the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t remember too much about the next bit. I already had a fever – must have got dirt into my arm, the wound was infected. Also I’d banged one of my morphine syrettes into my leg, and got some more from other guys, so I was quite dopey. They threw us into the back of a truck and drove for the rest of that night. We got to some military camp. They tried to interrogate me – I got slapped around the head a bit – but they could see I wasn’t making much sense, and I didn’t give them anything but my name and number. I stuck to my prearranged cover-story – that I was a medic, and I’d come out as part of a joint Anglo-US team to recover downed air-crew.

  ‘Then we were rolling again, in some other wagon. That part’s even hazier. I think I was delirious by that stage. The next thing I remember is lying on an operating table, with guys in green gowns and masks standing round. Jesus! I thought. What are they going to do to me? I tried to get up, but couldn’t. I seemed to be strapped to the table. I was fucking terrified.

  ‘Then this tall guy appeared beside me. He had no mask on, so I could see he had a thick, black moustache, just like Saddam. Under it he was smiling – a nasty, thin kind of smile. When he started to talk I was amazed, because he spoke fluent English.

  ‘ “I’m going to operate on your injured arm,” he said. “But don’t worry. I know what I am doing. I was trained in England at one of your best hospitals – the John Radcliffe, in Oxford.”

  ‘For a moment I was reassured. I knew the Radcliffe, and I reckoned the Iraqi must have been there; he couldn’t have invented that name out of the blue. I think I said, “Great!”.

  ‘ “Your English medical system is very good,” he went on. “What is not so good is that you tell us lies about yourself. It is important for us to know which unit you belong to, Sergeant Sharp. Come now – we need to know.”

  ‘I repeated my spiel about being a medic belonging to 22 Para Field Ambulance, the unit I’d invented. I could see he didn’t believe me, and after a few other questions he asked sarcastically, “Where is it based, this famous unit?”

  ‘ “Wroughton,” I replied, referring to the tri-service hospital in Wiltshire.

  ‘He’d heard of Wroughton, because he’d been there while at Oxford. It made him pause, but not for long. All this time the lights were blazing down into my face. I was shuddering and sweating with the fever. Then with a sudden movement the Iraqi picked something up from a trolley beside him and held it over me.

  ‘ “You see this?” he said, and the half-smil
e had died from under his black moustache. “This is a hypodermic syringe, full of anaesthetic. If I plunge the needle into your arm, it will put you out. But if I touch your eyeball with it, you will never see again.”

  ‘ “Bastard!” I told him.

  ‘ “So, what is your real unit, please?”

  ‘ “Bastard!” I shouted again.

  ‘ “Sergeant Sharp, this needle is very sharp. You like my little joke? You should laugh, to show you appreciate Iraqi humour. We are a very humorous people. Now – if the needle goes into your eye, you will not feel much. But afterwards, I promise you, you will not see anything at all. Which is your master eye?”

  ‘I knew what was coming next, so I held my mouth shut.

  ‘ “You don’t know? Or you won’t say? It doesn’t matter. We’ll assume your right eye is master, and start with that. Perhaps when that is gone, you will see sense with your left.”

  ‘He held the syringe so close in front of my face that I couldn’t focus on it any more. I struggled and fought to free my good arm and my legs. I think I shat myself. I yelled at the top of my voice, “BASTARDS! The whole fucking lot of you are BASTARDS!’ ”

  A noise somewhere close to me brought me back to Hereford. A loud knock had sounded on the door, which now burst open. Tracy’s head appeared in the gap. The saucy look had gone from her face, and she was looking quite scared. ‘You lot all right in here?’ she asked. ‘I thought the doc was getting attacked.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Doc Lester smiled. ‘The devils are coming out of him.’

  Tracy withdrew, and I apologized for making such a noise. Once again I was soaked in sweat.

  ‘Go on,’ the doctor said again.

  ‘He did it three or four times. I don’t know what happened in the end – whether I passed out, or whether he stuck the needle in my arm. I came round to find the operation done, and my arm in plaster.’