by alex seymour
Conventional problem-solving thought, the relentless internal dialogue, would not help me now. After months it hit me, salvation from the incessant internal rant, the sweetest insight: Don’t think. Don’t think. I learned, like an Indian sadhu, to repeat that mantra over and over until I literally stopped thinking and the quiet mind arrived. Repeat “don’t think, don’t think, don’t think” hundreds of times, and all of a sudden, guess what? You’re no longer thinking. The sweetest relief, and then sleep’s sweet embrace. Thank the Lord, I had found a coping mechanism. Just as an obsessive-compulsive’s ritual grants him or her some semblance of normality, this mantra gave me non-sense, no sense. Stop sensing, censor the senses. My own mind is the source of my distress, so detach from it and find peace. I realized I could use this for the rest of my life.
The next day Yoda briefed us to be on the lookout for two teams of Taliban suicide bombers in two white Toyota SUVs. “Fuckers have joined a death cult, and they don’t even know it,” said Taff, shaking his head bitterly. “Haven’t we all,” said Yoda, smiling.
9
Back in the Game
O ne of the terps handed me a handful of raw, untreated, compressed opium. He kept it in a John bag to mask the smell. It looked and felt like dried grass. The opium was the size of a man’s fist, and no doubt if consumed in the right way, it could last awhile—although I really didn’t have a clue. I’d been given a stash of drugs in the middle of a war zone. What would you do? Temptation flashed momentarily. Who hadn’t been tempted? Isn’t a pimp tempted to sample his stock? My weary mind mused that if refined opium resin was good enough for illustrious British gentlemen colonial explorers, then a gift of this weaker, unrefined kind from a well-meaning terp was worth contemplating. After all, the British Empire had started, funded, and engaged in open warfare during the Far Eastern opium wars in the nineteenth century with the full intention of selling it wholesale to the Chinese. So our global credentials in the war on drugs were impeccable.
If the terp, or any man, were caught with drugs, he would face an indignant authority figure playing out his public role, no doubt slotting in the word disgrace somewhere during the disciplinary process. We all knew that. What serviceman’s mind had not gone down this rabbit hole? We all wanted pleasure. You could self-manufacture all the endogenous opioids you want with exercise and exertion—but smuggle any back that was nurtured in the poppy fields we patrolled, well, not so good.
I handed the bag of opium back to the terp.
Every human has the sovereign right to control his or her own mind, providing of course that no one is harmed. Although with opium, let’s not tiptoe around it—the risk of addiction must be taken into consideration. When it comes to psychoactive substances, psychedelics are my preference. Opium and its harder derivatives are a diversion, useful to mask pain, as evidenced by the morphine that we carried on every patrol. Opiates contract consciousness, whereas psychedelics expand it. Millions had cottoned onto this in the sixties, and for me expansion is the name of the game. Exploring alternative states of consciousness is good, but I’d stuck to a self-administered ban on using any mind-altering plants while still serving. We had wised up to the fact that the forty-year farce of the war on drugs initiated by President Richard Nixon was part of the deal here, but being at war on drugs was out of the question. But if you were an aspirational smuggler and ever did want to get it back, how would you achieve this undetected? If we were to envisage a purely hypothetical scenario: some terps occasionally emigrated to the UK, and if one of them was interested in taking it in, it’s likely it would be a one-off—no chance of any resupply. Meanwhile, I asked the terp how they consumed the drug.
“Simple. Just soak the plant fibers in boiling water, dip a cigarette into the oil that skims the surface, let the cigarette dry, then smoke it.”
R&R back to the UK came in June, halfway through the tour. The Chinook flight from Khammar back to Bastion started with a rush of exhilaration. We swooped and banked across the desert with the airframe’s tailgate down; the door gunner alert, huge black visor covering his face like a character from a sci-fi movie. I was excited to be going home during Glastonbury, a music festival. I would have a week with my family before heading off to the festival, then return to spend every minute of the rest of my two weeks with Julia and the children.
At Brize Norton airport, in the UK, 150 troops disgorged from the aircraft. As soon as we entered the baggage hall, sniffer dogs—trained antinarcotic dogs—clambered over us. Dogs meticulously sniffed each separate pocket on our trousers, no one escaping intimate canine attention. They sniffed around every rucksack that came off the plane, as well as all the handheld bags. This would not have bode well for anyone’s private opium-den aspirations, regardless of whether you were a traveling terp or a hypothetical scenario spinner.
The relief of seeing my family was immense. As a belated birthday gift, Julia bought me a session in a flotation tank—the most effective way to propel you into a psychedelic state without the actual ingestion of psychedelics, the perfect warm-up for the next big event. Several days later I headed to my umpteenth Glastonbury Festival, a summer indulgence where, along with 170,000 others, you could leave your identity and cares at the main gate. It is a fantasyland of sublime hedonism. I was determined to obliterate any thoughts of Ganners, immersed in the now as each special moment unfolded. Pleasure was banked from each new person I met. Magic always happened. I was lured to the stranger corners of the festival that consistently blew my mind. The perfect antidote to the rule book. Turn on, tune in, drop out—again.
I met an ex-soldier who’d recently left the Parachute Regiment and Helmand. He had shoulder-length black hair and wore a battered baseball cap and huge mirrored aviators. He nailed the white-trash trucker look, constantly grinning. Aged twenty-two, he’d survived the war and everything the army had to throw at him, and now his whole life was ahead to enjoy. He carted around a bottle of nitrous oxide and was knocking out balloons full of laughing gas—at a quid a pop. Teenage girls competed for his attention and queued for the balloons, and he loved every minute. We bonded over how awful Helmand was in comparison. Despite the professional rivalry between the Parachute Regiment and the marines, right there and then he was my brother.
Later that night we watched U2. I’d been a fan as a kid, seeing them at gigs a couple of times in my teens, but then I drifted away as they grew into their stadium phase. At the festival I was dragged along to see them by friends, and I’d rocked up belligerently, convinced there was nothing to enjoy. It was raining. They kicked off their set with Bono belting out the lyrics to their anthem “One”: “We get to carry each other.” Within two minutes my head was bowed, and I was shedding tears. Pathetic. For Christ’s sake, I didn’t even like this band anymore—get a grip. I was secretly relieved that the rain provided camouflage for my tears.
Over the next two nights I steadily progressed toward a state of mental obliteration, past caring about maintaining some semblance of dignity. I tripped over people, ending up on my back, laughing. Roger, my festival wingman and silverback gorilla, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck at the end of the night, marching us onward to the next episode of Shangri-La insanity. After the rigors of the desert, this was the best place in the world, the best medicine.
After the festival, for the next eight days, I didn’t move from the cozy proximity of my family. Summertime glowed, and all I needed was to sit on the garden swing with the children and bury my face in their hair, breathing their smell. Life is poignant when you’re on R&R and about to go back into the fray. The cool English climate did its best to lift me, but tendrils of melancholy wove tighter. I smelled the flowers as I ambled around the garden in the sunshine. Matt, a walking pin-pulled grenade and the toughest guy in our multiple, said that on the last day of his R&R during his first tour, he had wept with his parents in his back garden. His first tour, aged nineteen, had been hard—lots of casualties. On that R&R he was convinced he was going back to He
lmand to die.
My daughter cried as I left. After I’d hugged everyone for the last time, I marched up the drive and jumped in the car without even glancing back, knowing they were looking at me and waving. I didn’t want them to see me with tears in my eyes.
The departure lounge at Royal Air Force Brize Norton was full of troops heading back from R&R. There were at least 150 of us, but this time no one was smiling.
At Camp Bastion we had four hours’ sleep before the 7 a.m. chopper flight back to our patrol base. Within twenty-four hours of leaving the UK, I was back at Zamrod getting rigged for a patrol. The efficiency was devastating. I couldn’t believe it.
Everything was running like clockwork, except me. Something felt wrong. As I pulled on my boots, the backs of my thighs began to cramp up. Not just ordinary cramps, but huge evil spasms. Within moments I was writhing on the floor in agony, legs locking up in shapes impossible to break free from. Yoda saw me writhing, and within thirty seconds was on my case, ordering that I sit out this patrol and take some time to recover. I fought to regain control of my legs and resist the pain, saying I’d be OK. But Yoda wouldn’t be swayed and insisted I stand down. I had mixed feelings: I was relieved not to be out on patrol at less than 100 percent but also felt bad because one of the other guys would have to take my place, pulling extra duty while I was just back from R&R, apparently the freshest man in the unit.
Any illness or minor injury incidents quickly became a source for complaining. Nearly everyone in 43 Bravo had spent time out of the game in the D&V (diarrhea and vomiting) isolation tent. But if anyone spent more than a day in there, it always caused resentment. Some of the men had been so ill they had spent three days there, but it brokered little sympathy from anyone. A man might be down, but the show still had to go on—patrols were never, ever canceled. Someone else who was able bodied would have to just step up and work harder. No one liked picking up the extra slack.
The cramps became completely debilitating, moving from my thighs to my entire legs, and concern grew about the creeping pain. I tried to figure out what had brought them on so quickly, and it didn’t take long to figure out that all I had had to drink in the last thirty-six hours were a couple of glasses of water. Fine in the UK but completely inadequate hydration, bordering on hazardous, here in 120°F summer heat. You need six liters a day to operate in Afghanistan, and the official advice was to consume seven. I’d drunk less than one liter in the last twenty-four hours. I hadn’t expected to be chosen to patrol so quickly, and this was a nasty wake-up call. I was back—but not in great shape.
The cramps lessened in severity but lingered. A twitch of a calf and the whole leg would snap into a painful spasm, forcing me to thrash and buck like an electrocution victim. Within eighteen hours I was back out on patrol—and it was one of the worst.
Yoda had committed to HQ that our patrol would be at a set location at a specific time. The destination was a couple of kilometers away, and we had to speed-march to make it to the rendezvous point on time. The pace was horrendous. Basic-training-test bad. Matt, the fittest of any of us, was on point, and as ever seemed to be the case, he carried the lightest load. I carried the ECM Red—a great lump of iron in a backpack with technologically sophisticated innards. Plus, the huge brick-sized spare batteries needed hauling, too. I soon was exhausted, the lingering dehydration making me feel ill.
Enemy gunfire erupted. Yoda was on the radio and told us that another team was engaged in a heavy firefight, and we had to yomp in double-quick time in support. Firefights broke out in several locations. Bursts of automatic weapons were coming from all directions. We tried to respond by cutting off possible Taliban escape routes, but there were too many areas in play, and we seemed to double back on ourselves again and again. After four hours of hunting, the decision was made to patrol back to Zamrod.
By this time it was pitch black, and the battery on the ECM unit needed changing. I fumbled in the darkness to change it and was monumentally pissed off to discover that the replacement didn’t work either. Something had shorted out on the machine. I knew, irrefutably, that before we’d left I’d double-checked that the spare was charged. One of the other lads witnessed that it was charged too, so my arse was covered as far as that little integrity check was concerned. But the real problem was that for the remainder of the patrol, we had no electronic countermeasures cover for the spectrum provided by that ECM. Translated: we were exposed to all radio-controlled bombs between here and Zamrod. Stress ballooned into an unwelcome dread as I fumbled in the dark with the dud battery. I felt responsible for exposing the men, even though the failure was a tech glitch. Sometimes these units just go tits up and stop working.
Yoda spoke. “OK, listen up! We have two choices: we can either yomp back to Zamrod without full ECM cover or stay out here in the boondocks with the Taliban all night and get the guys from Zamrod to resupply us with a fresh battery in the morning.”
Overwhelmingly, the men voted to take the risk and head back to the fort.
As we patrolled back, my thighs began to seize up. Like a curse, the cramps crept back. I couldn’t believe it. I’d drunk gallons of water and electrolytes in the last eighteen hours, yet they were back with a vengeance. Suck it up and move. As we snaked through the fields in the darkness, I noticed that the gap was growing dangerously wide between me and the man in front. His ghostly silhouette became increasingly difficult to make out in the darkness. Serious dread set in: it was looking like my lack of mobility would split the patrol up—an utter no-no. Jason, seeing me struggle, offered to take the ECM backpack. Although I’d been carrying it for six or seven hours now and my legs were in trouble, I declined.
“There’s no shame in it, Al,” he said.
But to me there was. I’d never given up on any patrol, ever. But the prospect of my legs seizing up completely and keeping the patrol out all night, with no prospect of resupply until the morning, was too awful to contemplate. The men would hate me for days. Half an hour later, things were so bad that another lad, Chris, actually did relieve me of the ECM, trading it for his own lighter backpack and a metal detector. Walking became immediately easier. As we crossed irrigated fields and muddy ruts, the cramps stayed away. I couldn’t believe the difference in weight between the two backpacks! I felt like skipping and was elated that we’d all make it back tonight and, provided we didn’t step on any booby traps, all in one piece.
Still, I felt ashamed. For the first time in my life, I’d had to be relieved of a piece of kit. The gratitude I felt for Chris was immeasurable. During the last nine months, in which we had worked together every day, he was the only marine that I hadn’t really bonded with, even when I’d tried to start a conversation. Eventually, I’d reached the conclusion that he was either shy or didn’t like me. Regardless, he showed his true colors in my hour of need and saved my bacon in hostile Nad Ali that night.
We made it back, but I suspected Matt wasn’t pleased. He was one of several who had joined M Company from Recce Troop and was always the most vocal about maintaining high standards. He’d had his appraisal and was officially, based upon our evaluation system, “number-one marine” in M Company in terms of aptitude and performance. He was the senior marine in wartime experience, and with the skills he had developed in Recce Troop, I figured that, out of all the guys, he needed to be appeased. He had a prickly side; he was incendiary, always opinionated. But you couldn’t fault his soldiering skills, exactly the kind of man you wanted by your side in a crisis. I approached him the next morning when we had the opportunity to have a quiet moment.
“Sorry about last night.”
No response, obviously waiting for me to continue.
“I’ve come back from R&R and got these cramps because I hadn’t hydrated properly on the way back out here from the UK. But I’ve turned it around and am necking stupid amounts of water to get it fixed. I’ll be back in the game tomorrow.”
His ego was not insignificant. Previously, we’d joked that in anothe
r life he would have been fronting a rock band. Now, he acknowledged my deference to his alpha status.
“Don’t worry, Bud,” he said. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
I took a moment to appraise the exchange. Hilarious. I’d just been professionally chastised by a guy young enough to be my son. What the fuck? But he was right. Lapses in standards would get us killed.
Privately, I was still mortified and brooded while in the sangar that night. I was pleased that Jason came up to relieve me at 2 a.m. He was my confidante. He had a six-year-old son living with his ex-wife. Two days previously while cleaning the galley, I’d overheard him on the satellite phone.
“Hi ya, Son. How you doin’? What you been up to then, eh? Really? Sounds fun—he must be a good mate if you can play together for that long. What else have you been doing? Cool. Listen, I’m sorry I missed your birthday but I’m kinda stuck out here. Has Mummy let you watch the DVDs I sent you as presents? Callum? Callum? Can you hear me? . . . Bollocks, fucking line’s dead!”
He barely restrained himself from smashing the phone on the side of the galley table as he cussed under his breath. “Fucking piece of shit phone! Fuck it. Fuck everything.”
And right now I was turning to him for help, saying, “I’m kicking myself about what happened on the patrol last night. Seriously, I’m thinking about wrapping, telling the sarn’t major it would make sense if he found me another role. Honestly, for the first time last night, I actually felt like a fucking liability. I might be too old for this shit. Last night was a warning I should take a step back. This is a young man’s game, and I don’t want put anyone’s life at risk again.”
His response was robust. “Do me a favor and stop dripping! Don’t be a pussy. You’re a fucking marine! Get a grip and sort your life out, Royal. You didn’t get here by accident. You got through training didn’t you? This ain’t no harder. Get over yourself, man the fuck up. Realize it’s just a blip and get back in the game. Lighten up, mate.”