by Harry Parker
A man at the rear of the helicopter beckoned and we walked out across the apron. I was on BA5799’s back; he was last in the single file of men. The wind swirled around us and he pulled his goggles down off his helmet. We shuffled forward under the blades and through the exhaust fumes as men walked up the ramp past the mounted rear machine gun. They heaped their Bergens and cases down the centre aisle and then filled the seats and helped each other strap into the four-way belts. BA5799 threw his Bergen onto the pile and assisted the crewman pulling a ratchet-strap over the bags. He was thanked with a thumbs up, then sat in the final seat and placed me between his legs next to his rifle.
The sound of the helicopter escalated and the disc of shadow lightened on the concrete behind. The aircraft twitched as it left the ground. Its shadow shrank and jumped over blast walls, protective walkways, hangars and tents as we banked out towards the desert. Through the open rear door, the two hunched forms of the attack helicopter escort lifted and followed us across the sprawling camp.
BA5799 and the others, rifles upright between their legs, sat on either side of the fuselage, unable to talk over the noise as they were projected low over the empty desert.
Soon the faded scars of habitation lined the sand below. The crewman sat down behind the gun on the rear ramp, pulled a lever that sprang forward and rotated the weapon over the increasingly dense patchwork of villages and the grids of irrigation channels that flashed in the sun. He looked back and held his hand open and shouted, ‘Five minutes.’
BA5799 lifted a hand to acknowledge him before passing the message to the man next to him. Thumbs ups and nods rippled up the aircraft. The helicopter started to manoeuvre, rocking violently below the rotors as it slewed across the landscape. I slipped and BA5799 grabbed hold to keep me between his legs. Sky and then ground filled the rear opening. An attack helicopter rushed past and the green and ochre ground swept below: a road with a man pulling a handcart, a donkey tied up in a field, a tree line stretching out to a square enclosure.
The engine sound changed and the thud of passing rotors deepened as the aircraft flared into its final approach. We decelerated over the wall of a camp and its watchtower, where a soldier shielded his eyes against the debris. A green tent was blown free and tumbled away across the courtyard until it caught in a vehicle’s bar armour.
Dust kicked up by the downdraught engulfed the helicopter as it lurched in the blindness. Feeling suddenly weightless, the men tensed. The aircraft bounced on its suspension, skidded sideways and then the engines howled and we were airborne again, lifting away through the churning cloud. I pressed into the floor and BA5799 braced his legs against me and closed his eyes in helplessness, his stomach lurching.
The crewman spoke urgently into his microphone and scanned the tree lines around the patrol base, his thumbs ready to depress the triggers as we banked out of the pyre of dust.
We were over the desert again, pitching from side to side, and then we slowed and passed over the same perimeter wall and watchtower. We bounced once and stopped, rocking on the suspension.
The crewman stood up from his gun, lowered the rear door and released the strap holding the Bergens. BA5799 pushed the cylinder to release the belt and slid me up onto his back. He dragged his Bergen free and pulled it down the ramp onto the HLS, out from under the rotors.
The four men crouched together as the helicopter lifted away. Wind stripped dirt and sand from the ground and blasted it against me. The aircraft disappeared over a wall and soon after the attack helicopter high in overwatch drifted away in pursuit and it was quiet.
A man in a T-shirt and flip-flops came out from behind a wall.
‘Welcome to Patrol Base 43,’ he said. ‘I’m the second in command. That looked like a bit of a roller coaster. Maybe the pilot couldn’t handle the brownout; can’t be easy though. We once had three attempts.’ He grinned. ‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. Not that we ever get much warning anyway.’ He looked down at me and the other bags. ‘Any post with you? No? Bugger. Post’s about the only thing that makes up for having the camp destroyed every time they come in. Here, let me take that, I’ll show you where you’ll be based and we’ll need to sign you in at the ops room.’
BA5799 picked me up and adjusted my shoulder straps and we followed the man across the HLS into a courtyard of thick mud walls rounded by weather. A few men hammered tent pegs back in, another collected strewn washing.
The man pointed BA5799 to a narrow opening in a wall that led into a dark room with two Z-beds. ‘That’s where officers stay, and I’ll just show the others to the NCOs’ lines. I’ll come back and give you a tour of the camp in a bit.’
BA5799 ducked through the doorway, sat on a camp bed and leant his rifle against me. He unclipped his helmet and ruffled his flattened hair, then he stretched, opened my top pocket and put his goggles away.
The man came back and stood silhouetted in the doorway.
‘You okay? I’m Dave,’ he said and held out a hand.
‘Tom. Yes, fine, thanks – good to be here.’ They shook hands.
There was a sharp clap outside and then another. They both flinched. And then two distant thumps.
‘Ah, the teatime contact,’ the man said and looked out of the doorway. ‘The heli must’ve got them all excited. Grab your helmet and rifle, Tom. No better way to show you the camp.’
BA5799 zipped my pocket back up, fastened his helmet strap, clipped a magazine onto his weapon and followed the man out into the light as the air started to clap an uneven rhythm.
I was covered in foreign dust and he left me beside a camp bed in the small room dug into a compound wall. A camel spider crawled across the ground and felt with its hairy legs up and over me.
7
I was normally placed on the lime-green tablecloth in the kitchen. That day I was next to the dog lead on the coffee-stained newspaper. The doorbell rang. The dog barked. The dark outline of two figures showed through the glass panels. She came in from the sitting room and shut the dog out behind her. She craned her neck to see. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
It was a man and a woman. He was wearing a regimental tie. They said her name. She nodded. They asked if they could come in. She gripped the door and didn’t open it any wider and asked what had happened. She didn’t want them to come in. She had imagined the horror of this moment, but she was numb. She was aware of the potential for grief. It curled around her throat and fluttered in her stomach.
She remembered her son’s smile and the last time he’d walked out of the gate and said that he would be fine and she remembered wishing he wouldn’t tempt fate like that. She remembered when he was eight and had cried on the way to school. She remembered when he finished training and how proud she had been.
She remembered she’d felt the same dread every time the doorbell had rung since he had been away. She remembered not wanting to go downstairs and the relief when it had been door-to-door salesmen, and how much nicer she had been to them. And now she wished she hadn’t come downstairs.
Maybe she could just take the dog for a walk and they wouldn’t be here when she came back. She didn’t want to face this on her own.
They asked again if they could come in. She let them in but wanted them to go away and never return – to have never existed. She put the kettle on and told them they would want a cup of tea. It wasn’t real until they said it.
They told her it was fine and she should really sit down. They sat around the table and the man asked a number of questions confirming who she was. She just wanted to know now, to just be told so the horror could start. She knew she was about to be damaged; it would change everything. He asked if she was his mother – of course she was.
The woman stood up. She looked grave and hadn’t said anything since they had come in – she probably hated doing this. ‘Let me make you a cup,’ she said and went over to the kettle. She took a mug from the cupboard, but when she saw it had Mummy’s Little Soldier written on it she put it back and
chose another.
And then the man told her what had happened. Her son had been very seriously injured and was being operated on, it was the best front-line medical facility in the world. He said they didn’t know many details yet but he was very seriously hurt, had lost a lot of blood and his left leg – that was all they knew at the moment.
She was relieved – he wasn’t dead. Her son was still alive. The man continued to talk and asked where her husband was and if she should call him. She reached over and picked me up, pulled my magnetic clasp apart and took her phone from inside me. Her voice shook as she told her husband, not knowing how to form the words. She gave as many details as she could and then her voice started to break and she handed the phone over to the man. He explained the same things he had to her and then put the phone down and told her he was on his way back.
She remembered him, three years old, running down the beach on holiday giggling. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. Not in front of these people. The woman put a cup of tea in front of her. She looked at it but didn’t see it.
Then she asked what very seriously injured meant and whether he would live. They gave answers she knew they were trained to give and realised that even though she wished they had never come, they hated this too and she felt sorry for them.
Suddenly she knew the relief might be unfounded, that her son might already have died on an operating table. She thought of him dying – perfectly formed – and desperately far away, without her. And then she remembered the man had said he’d lost a leg and she adjusted the image on the operating table, and her imagination went too far and added injury after injury. It deformed him and he wasn’t her son any more, and it was too much and her face began to crumple and she asked them if they would just give her a moment. She grabbed me from across the table and went out of the room and stumbled upstairs, pulling herself forward with the banister.
She put me down on the white painted chair and bent over the toilet and was sick. She was sick again and concentrated on not making any sound – not wanting them to hear.
She crawled over to the door and locked it and leant back against it. She felt inside me for tissues and wiped around her mouth and then brushed the tears away from her eyes. She wasn’t crying, the tears were from being sick, and she wondered why not. She focused on her breathing and waited. There were footsteps below and the woman whose name she couldn’t remember was calling up the stairs. She answered impatiently that she was fine, she just needed a minute.
She replaced the pack of tissues and left her delicate hand limp in me. It trembled and her rings glinted. Then she clenched her hand until it hurt and her skin whitened and the fine veins bulged blue.
She brushed her teeth but couldn’t bring herself to look in the mirror. And then she left me and went downstairs. The murmur of voices came from below and a car crunched over the gravel and the dog barked with excitement. Her husband’s deep voice entered the conversation as the talking continued. It was dark when a car left.
They both came up and she sat on the white chair while he rested on the edge of the bath. She reached down and took the phone out of me and started to text and then rang instead to tell her mother what had happened. He watched her talk and, when she had finished, said there was nothing they could do until tomorrow. He asked if she was sure she didn’t want anything to eat.
In the middle of the night she came in and sat on the toilet and held her head for a long time and then clicked the light off and went out.
He shaved in the morning. She stepped past him and showered. He asked if she was okay and she could tell he felt stupid asking. There was a distance between them that neither wanted to bridge with words. She dressed and took me downstairs and pulled out her address book and phoned the kennel – yes, it was an emergency. He called his office and they sat at the table looking at the toast rack. Neither knew what to do. He walked the dog and she lay on the bed.
*
They received a call and were suddenly urgent. She was glad of something to do and packed a case. They loaded the car and I was in the footwell below her feet. They held hands across the gear-stick and she looked at the rivulets of rain that streamed along the window and blurred the casket-brown motorway embankment beyond.
Her throat was tight and a sickness pulled down in her stomach. The tightness remained even when she wasn’t thinking about it, a constant physical reminder knotted inside her. She sighed deeply and the knot fluttered, loosened and then pulled taut again.
The car stopped and he put a small piece of paper on the dashboard. He opened her door and smiled at her. She picked me up and we walked into a building through sliding doors and down cream-coloured corridors.
He asked for directions at the desk. Her arm that held me was trembling. She wanted to brace herself but couldn’t – the blow was coming. The woman behind the desk smiled at them and pointed down the corridor and she stared at her until he gently tugged her elbow and asked again if she was okay.
*
I was next to her in a room and she reached into me and turned the phone to silent. Its glow illuminated the pens and the address book, the opened tissues and the phone charger until it dimmed to black.
There were other people in the room; a woman whose young daughter pushed coloured blocks along a spiralling wire and glanced at her mother, another who clutched her phone and a man whose face was blank but who cried silently. They sat in silence, each of them separated by a few seats.
A nurse came in and they all looked up and she asked the man and the second woman through. They stood and shuffled out. They came back later and sat closer to each other and he rested a hand on her arm. Both of them stared at the same spot on the floor.
I was on her lap, held between her hands, when a man opened the door and asked if they would like to follow him. Her husband stood and ushered her out protectively and we walked down a corridor to another room where the man said Dr Morris would join them soon.
A man wearing a grey suit entered and asked them if they would like to have a seat. He introduced himself and explained that he was the doctor in charge of the intensive care unit. He said their son had been flown back and arrived in the hospital three hours ago. His team had assessed their son and decided to take him straight into surgery.
He listed wounds and turned his professional knowledge into words they could understand. They held hands and her husband asked questions for them that the man answered. Their son was now stable but very seriously injured – her hand clenched on my strap – and they were also worried about an exposed femoral artery.
The doctor told them they would be able to see him soon and her pulse quickened. He warned them that their son was heavily sedated – they needed to keep him that way – and there was currently no plan to bring him round.
Her heartbeat thumped in her head. They could see him. He was back from that place, she thought, and would never have to go there again. The relief flooded through her – nervous excitement wrapping around the knot in her throat. She smiled at her husband and squeezed his hand.
The doctor led them in. I hung by her side and her husband had his arm around her and supported her across the ward, past the beds and dividing curtains, the flickering machines and the attending nurses, towards the bed her son was in. When she saw him she faltered and her husband held her closer.
She hugged me as she sat in the chair next to his bed. She looked at his face that was on its side and covered by a breathing mask – like a fighter pilot, she thought – and through the plastic she could see the thick tube that made his chest rise and fall.
There were other tubes entering her son but she wasn’t sure what they all did. She wanted to hold him and hugged me even tighter on her lap. Please be okay, she thought. Please don’t be brain-damaged; they hadn’t ruled that out. He had lost a lot of blood but his reflexes were good – that was encouraging.
They had shown her the legs below a sheet tent but she couldn’t register it. They were grossly swollen, covered in
plastic dressings and pipes that drained the wounds. The bottom of one was missing – this didn’t matter, it wasn’t him, he was in there. She reached out and stroked his forehead. Please be you. She remembered his smile. Please be able to smile again. His hair was fairer than normal and she thought of the heat and sun where he’d been and it all seemed so far away.
*
We were in the transit accommodation. She couldn’t recall how we had got here, only that they’d left him and now were in a room with a print of a lighthouse on the wall, where only people who worried ever stayed.
She rummaged around inside me, peered in and pushed things aside to see my contents. And then she turned me upside down on top of a chest of drawers and everything from inside me spilt across its hard surface. She looked again but couldn’t find what she wanted and threw me across the room, then caught her reflection in a mirror and started to cry. She swept the address book and tissue and pens away and they scattered on the carpet as her body heaved. He came in from the toilet and held her and moved her across to the bed away from where I lay on the floor. Through sobs she told him she’d lost her phone – it was in me but had disappeared. He went over to the hook by the door and took her phone from her coat pocket and placed it in her hands and sat down beside her. He put his arm round her and she cried onto his shoulder while looking at the phone. He undressed her gently and pulled the blue duvet over her.
He picked me up and carefully replaced everything and left me beside her on the floor. She slept but in the morning her son was her first thought, there was no moment of respite.
And then we were back with him. She placed me on a trolley-table and sat down. His chest still rose and fell, though she wondered if he was yellower or there was more strain on his face. She hoped the doctors knew, but what if they didn’t? What if there was something else they hadn’t noticed? One of the machines above him beeped and she looked over at a nurse who walked by unconcerned. She didn’t know what the digital numbers meant but she wished it wouldn’t sound like an alarm.