First Man In

by Ant Middleton

  Leaders understand that their demons are an essential part of who they are. By befriending them you’re able to call on them when the time comes. Perhaps you’re an employer who has had to lay off a lot of staff for the good of the company. Perhaps you need to tell someone who’s struggling that they need to try harder. Perhaps you need to tell the person who’s leading you some respectful but honest truth. There’s no way of doing these things successfully without pushing down on your pedal and letting some darkness come out.

  But demons don’t become your friends without a fight. And before you take them on, you have to acknowledge that you’ve got them. From what I’ve observed, this is one of the reasons servicemen can struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. For the guys I’ve spoken with who suffer from PTSD, the problem isn’t that they can’t process what they’ve witnessed. It’s that they can’t process what they’ve done. They’ve either made a mistake or they’ve done something that’s resulted in carnage. Either that or they can’t handle seeing the everyday horrors of war and accept that they’re active players in it. If you’ve synched up with your demons, there’s a better chance you’ll accept that that’s part of you. You’re an animal. You have teeth, as very many of earth’s creatures do. Once you accept that, it will no longer seem strange that a man who loves his wife and children with all his heart can show up for work one morning and destroy life without thinking.

  Making friends with your demons also means accepting that, sometimes, you’re a maker of mistakes. Many people I know with PTSD are perfectly able to process the witnessing of death and suffering. What they seem to struggle with more is the fact that they were a cause of it, either as the result of an error or because, in the stress and confusion of the battlefield, they failed to prevent it. Perhaps fear took hold of them, perhaps something within them told them to hide or to shoot recklessly. It seems to me that, because they’re in denial of their own potential for causing badness, they play the scene over and over in their heads, working through endless different scenarios: ‘What else could I have done to prevent it?’; ‘What other decisions could I have made?’; ‘Why wasn’t it me?’ By accessing the darkness that dwells within you, you can accept you made a mistake and move on with your life. You have to be able to not care. If you deny your demons, I’m telling you, they’ll take you down.

  Now that I’m on civvy street I have to dominate my angry demon. I’ve been trained to meet violence with extreme violence, but society has zero tolerance for that kind of behaviour. So when I feel the anger rising and I want to strike out, I have to keep it under my command. Control is crucial. Once you’ve made peace with your dark parts, and have authority over them, you can begin using them to make positives. The same demon that made me violent in the streets of Chelmsford has given me a form of self-defence now. I’ve lost the fear of being punched or attacked, and this gives me huge power. I also use that violent demon to ramp me up with aggression when I need to get a tough job done. By making friends with your demons, you can take all the darkness that lies within you and create light.

  LEADERSHIP LESSONS

  Make friends with your demons. Having dark forces living within us is part of being human. They’re the result of the inevitable damage of life. Each one of us has a choice: make these demons work for us, or turn them loose against us.

  Don’t feel bad for going the long way around. When we watch the movies we see people going through hell and coming out the other side a perfect hero. These are fairy tales. In real life we usually have to go through hell and go through hell and go through hell, and only then, if we’re lucky, do we learn our lessons – only to half-forget them again. This is nothing to be ashamed of. This is simply the rough and tumble of learning.

  Most of us have horror stories we can tell about our childhoods. It’s not the horror that defines you, it’s how well you’ve fought it.

  Never be afraid to look for help in unlikely places. If I hadn’t asked my nan for that address, there’s a good chance I’d never have met up with my dad’s family. I thought the chances of her helping me were not much better than zero, but you never can tell what’s going on in someone else’s head. Before dismissing other people, give them a try. You never know who’ll turn out to be an unexpected ally.

  LESSON 5

  YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THE LEADER TO LEAD

  The door of the Chinook began lowering before the helicopter was even on the ground. The stale, still air we’d been breathing for the last hour was instantly dissipated as the outside blasted in. Light flooded over the troop of men sitting in rows, in full kit, their helmets on, their SA80s on their laps. As the helicopter wobbled and bumped to land we moved in single file out into the gale of hot wind and grit that was being thrown up by its enormous blades. The smell was of jet fuel and dried bark. The day was quickly fading, the sun a hazy white button balancing on a distant ridge.

  The landscape was barren and strange. It was desert, but not like those glossy images of perfect sand dunes you see in places like the Sahara. This was scrubby and dirty and dotted with tough, thorny-looking shrubs. And it just went on and on, with no particular landmarks other than a bored, ugly river that wound through the scrub. To the north I could see the sombre shadow shapes of a range of low mountains that I’d been informed was infested with Taliban. It was from there that our base would be regularly attacked with gunfire and RPGs. About a mile to the south was the troubled town of Sangin, in whose streets I’d be operating. Once the Chinook had left us and become just another dot of light in the deep, star-sprayed evening, I was surprised to note that it was also bitterly cold. But I was happy. Here I was. My first war zone.

  I’d taken off from RAF Northolt on 21 September 2007 to take part in Operation Herrick 7, which was what they called the British operation in Afghanistan. I’d been made second in command, or 2IC, with direct responsibility for four people in my troop. We’d spent a couple of days acclimatising in the relative comforts of Camp Bastion, a vast base the size of Reading that contained the fifth-busiest UK-operated air strip, not to mention a gym, a Pizza Hut and a non-alcoholic bar called Heroes.

  From there we’d been sent to our Forward Operating Base, Sangin District Command or ‘Sangin DC’, which lay just outside Sangin, a town of 30,000 in Helmand Province. Sangin had a reputation not only as a Taliban town but as a local centre of the heroin trade. With both the Islamists and the drug traffickers violently resisting our presence, it was without doubt the deadliest place in the country at that time. A third of all deaths of British troops during the conflict occurred in Sangin. There was a one in four chance that a man in my position would leave this place injured or killed.

  Back at Camp Bastion, dusty and tired returning troops had warned us what to expect. The Taliban would lay IEDs, or ‘improvised explosive devices’, at night, especially around our base, which had only two entrances and exits. There were two types – contact IEDs, which would explode when stepped on, and command IEDs, which were detonated remotely, usually via Bluetooth. One common tactic the Taliban used involved detonating an IED, then waiting for more troops to arrive and assist the wounded before either detonating another device or attacking with sniper fire.

  ‘You’re definitely going to get in a firefight,’ one lad told us back at the NAAFI at Bastion. ‘People are going to get injured. You should expect a couple of deaths on this tour.’

  Hearing this made my blood pump hot. Finally, I’d have the chance to put all my training into practice. As I looked around the table I was surprised to see that some of the other faces didn’t seem quite so excited. There was one young man in particular, a nineteen-year-old from Devon called Ian Cressey, who looked like he wanted to run off and ring his mum. I tried to encourage him.

  ‘Sounds fucking hardcore, doesn’t it, Cressey?’ I said, squeezing his shoulder. I gave him a wink. ‘I can’t wait. I just want to get in there and kill cunts, yeah?’ I joked.

  ‘Same here,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah
?’ I said, squeezing harder now.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, his eyes wandering to some distant point beyond my left shoulder. ‘Kill cunts.’

  ‘That’s the spirit, lad.’

  I made sure I was sitting next to Cressey in the Chinook out to Sangin DC. I was turning to get a look out of the window when I saw his head was down.

  ‘What’s up, dude?’ I said, shouting above the colossal racket of the helicopter.

  ‘I’m good,’ he said, with a thin smile. ‘Can’t wait. Kill cunts, mate.’

  ‘You can talk to me,’ I said. ‘You know that, don’t you? Whenever you need to, just grab me.’

  ‘No, I’m good,’ he said. ‘Cheers, Ant. I’m fine.’

  But within thirty seconds, he was examining his thumbs again, his face the colour of yesterday’s porridge.

  This was a worry. It wasn’t only that Cressey was one of the four men I’d have immediate responsibility for in Sangin. We were going into a war zone, and in that environment it would only take one man with his mind tuned out to fuck the whole thing up. I knew that I’d die for my men, every single one of them. I needed to be sure that every single one of them would die for me. That was the only way we’d all make it out of Sangin with our hearts still beating and the blood it was pumping finding four limbs. But the way it was looking right now, the only thing Cressey was dying for was a ticket back to London Heathrow. I’d made Emilie a solemn promise that I’d come home alive. When I’d made that promise I had no doubt I could keep to it. But what I didn’t need were weaknesses in my troop. And Cressey was beginning to look like one.

  Forty minutes into the flight, as we neared Sangin DC, we began to draw machine-gun fire. The helicopter banked suddenly and swerved, the windows opposite us emptying of sky and showing only the sand and rocks of the plains of Helmand far below. I winked at Cressey excitedly. Before long we righted ourselves and were landing.

  The base was an old bombed-out Afghan compound that had been commandeered by our military. There was nothing pretty or comfortable about it. Half the walls were pimpled with bullet holes and shrapnel spray from bomb blasts, the other half weren’t there anymore and were now just sandbags. Us troops would live and sleep in mud huts and socialise around a simple fire pit. Other more permanent but still heavily war-damaged buildings housed the offices of our people, along with some local-government personnel and members of the Afghan police.

  I, and many of the other lads, were wary of these guys. The previous year the Taliban had retaken Sangin town, and Sangin DC had spent several months in a state of siege, suffering fierce attacks almost every day. Afterwards it was discovered that the Afghan police had been leaking information to the Taliban about its layout and operation. The siege had ended five months earlier, having lasted from June 2006 to April 2007. It had taken two hundred paratroopers, with the help of seven hundred men from various allied forces, to finally break it. These Talibs weren’t fucking about.

  But even with the base free, the Taliban wasn’t prepared to let the town go without a serious battle. The fighting continued until April 2007, when a thousand coalition troops finally recaptured it as part of Operation Silver. And now that we had it back, we had to keep it. This was where me and my boys came in. 40 Commando had to maintain a show of strength, which meant fourteen-hour foot patrols up and down the war-damaged streets, fully armed and laden with kit. We’d go out in three teams of eight, one upfront, one in the middle and one behind. We wanted the locals to look at us and think, ‘Fucking hell, they’re a force to be reckoned with.’ But it wasn’t just a case of wartime policing and the display of power. We had to maintain a balance. On our patrols we’d try to help the locals out where we could, often with medical attention, while gathering as much intelligence from them as was possible.

  Hearts and minds were crucial, but in reality the job mostly involved getting from A to B to C to D. The town itself was largely abandoned, the shutters closed on all the businesses apart from a couple of shops selling the usual essentials: SIM cards from the local networks – Roshan, MTN, Afghan Telecom – blue tins of chicken sausages, packets of Pine and Wave cigarettes, shit crisps, scratched glass bottles of Coca-Cola in knackered fridges, the logo in Arabic script, and slightly squashed cartons of mango and pineapple juice. We’d usually only spot the occasional person running here and there. When the locals saw our troop approaching they’d go into lockdown, hiding in their compounds.

  Our patrols were tough, physically and mentally. We’d be in full body armour, with front and back plates and side protection, and I had an additional cop vest for good measure. As well as all this, we’d have twelve full magazines apiece, each containing thirty rounds, together with four grenades and six litres of water to last us the day. We’d stop for lunch and eat rations – bacon and beans, corned-beef hash or beef stew – but I’d make my lads have them cold. I didn’t want to waste time heating food up, and the last thing I needed was them staggering around feeling lethargic. We’d usually have a brew going, so at least there’d be something hot in their stomachs. The whole break would be over in ten minutes. We’d always make sure our movements were as unpredictable as possible. The Taliban could never hope to take us on toe-to-toe, so instead would play a sneaky-beaky game. If they were able to predict where we’d be at a certain time, they’d be able to strike, either with IEDs, suicide idiots or sniper fire from high buildings.

  Just two days after our arrival we got the news that our troop sergeant had to return to the UK because his wife had fallen from a horse and broken her back. In the shuffle upwards, I went from section 2IC to section commander, an unusual promotion for someone with my experience. Now I had responsibility for eight men, and had to carry a pistol and extra ammunition in my day sack, which weighed between fifty and sixty pounds.

  As the days ground on I was growing increasingly worried about some of the lads, not least Cressey. On some mornings I’d seen him actually vomit with fear as he was preparing to leave the base and, right now, he was staring at the dirt, sighing and grumbling about his cold beans.

  ‘Get your fucking head up,’ I said to him. ‘You’re a Royal Marine in a fucking war zone. Suck it up.’

  ‘I’m trying, Ant.’

  ‘Trying’s not fucking good enough.’

  I hoped I was getting the balance right, but it was tricky. I had to keep Cressey sharp, yet at the same time I was worried that if I just drilled him further into the ground he’d become even more of a liability. While it was my job to keep him motivated, I also believed that the Royal Marines should consist of positive, self-motivated people.

  When I wasn’t sure how to act and was tempted to give Cressey or one of the others a heavy blast I’d sometimes ask myself, ‘What would Dad have done?’ I’d often give them the sharp end when they needed it and then later on, maybe at night around the fire, I’d have a more gentle talk in private. It was usually pretty effective with most of them, but nothing seemed to be working with Cressey. I could see it in his face – he was counting down the days and the hours. He wasn’t organised with his kit, either. I was always careful to take all the rounds out of the magazine of my weapon, because if you don’t it weakens the spring. Worse-case scenario: you could fire half your magazine, only for it to fail. To avoid this, I’d ease my spring every now and then and oil it up. I’d shown Cressey this more than once and impressed upon him what might happen if his weapon jammed during a firefight. But he’d made it very clear he couldn’t give a fuck.

  It all came to a head one night when we received letters from home. Letters had always been a bit of a sore point for me. Before going to war it was mandated that every man had to write a letter for their family to receive in the event of their death. I’d refused point-blank but, after my arrival at Sangin DC, my sergeant major had pulled me up about it.

  ‘You’re not getting out of this, Middleton,’ he told me. ‘Write anything you want. Just get it done.’

  ‘OK, Sergeant Major,’ I said.

&nbs
p; I took the sheet of paper he’d handed me back to my quarters and wrote ‘The good die young, and I don’t want to disappoint anyone’ on it, before slotting it neatly back into its envelope. That evening, my sergeant major came to find me, my envelope in his hand.

  ‘Middleton, you fucking lunatic. I can’t fucking send this to your wife.’

  ‘I don’t want to put anything,’ I said.

  ‘Why not? What about your family? What about your daughter?’

  ‘What about them? I’m not going to die. Simple as.’

  He walked off, laughing, and shaking his head.

  Unlike the rest of the lads, I’d decided never to call home. I’d also given Emilie strict instructions not to write to me. I just didn’t want to know what was happening back there. Any domestic problems my wife or children might be going through would only distract me, just as reminding myself how much I missed Emilie would make me lose focus. I know this sounds harsh. But the fact is that when you’re in the field you can’t afford a second’s hesitation. You can’t allow a single drip of negativity or worry to get in. You need to be able to dodge bullets out there. Your awareness has to be keen enough that you can anticipate exactly what’s going to happen next. You just can’t do that if you’re thinking about the broken dishwasher or the rash on your kid’s arse. It was much more important that I came back alive.

  This was why I was surprised and nervous when the mail was handed out as we were sitting around the campfire and I was handed an envelope with Emilie’s handwriting on it. Had something happened back home? Something serious enough to force Emilie to contact me? I was staring at the letter, the fire hot on my face, not knowing what to do with it, when I noticed Cressey beside me, frantically opening his latest note from home. Then he stood up and walked away.