Anatomy of a Soldier

by Harry Parker

  Ahead the line moved, lifting away and extending until the man in front of us levered up and walked off. When there was a gap BA5799 stood up, turned and walked backwards holding out a thumb, and the figure behind followed.

  We went onto a track covered with foliage and I struggled to enhance any light in the dark. A droplet of sweat collected off BA5799’s eyebrow, swung around my rubber cuff and dripped onto his cheek. We edged across a plank bridge above inky water and headed out over another field.

  In front a figure stumbled with a stifled curse and the weight of his equipment pulled him down into a ditch. Two others helped him up. We walked on towards it, the man ahead swept his arm out to indicate the hazard and BA5799 did the same for the man behind.

  We stopped regularly and the line concertinaed together and then stretched away as they moved on to each pre-decided feature. We waited near a motionless village and a dog barked and another echoed in the distance.

  BA5799 adjusted a dial on my side and I increased the contrast of my output. He focused me on deep patches of shadow and then moved on to the next, looking for a silhouette or sudden flash. He knew they must be there, watching the single file of soldiers laden with weapons cross the open fields, alerted by the dogs and the shuffle of their clothes and buzz of radios that seemed so loud.

  We stayed in the same place for a long time and he was frustrated by not knowing what was happening ahead. He lifted me up so I pointed at the stars again, swept his sleeve across his eyes and dropped me back into position. He yawned: his adrenaline was spent.

  *

  Finally, the man in front whispered that they were at the rendezvous. BA5799 understood from the plan that they would now move between two buildings and form a defensive triangle so the others could find them. He signalled the message to the man behind him and it murmured down the rest of the line.

  A soldier who knelt beside the track counted us through. We passed the legs of those who were in position, lying flat behind their weapons, and dropped down. We were in a ragged triangle, all facing out. A dog started to bark again.

  BA5799 was uncomfortable: a stone pushed into his ribs and my weight pulled his helmet forward so he had to arch his back painfully to see. He shifted and drank some water from a pipe protruding from the top of his day-sack.

  He knew from the plan that they would appear from the direction he faced. And after his back had numbed, an infrared light emerged that he could see only through me. It bobbed up and down as a soldier walked out across the field, followed by another single file of dark figures. BA5799 lifted me and could see little through the murk without my enhancement, then dropped me back down so the line of men reappeared.

  They stopped alongside an earth mound that divided two fields. A soldier left our position and went out to greet the lead figure.

  The man next to us slid over and hissed in BA5799’s ear. ‘Looks like this is me then, boss,’ he said. ‘Let Lieutenant Baker know I’ll be warming his bed.’

  ‘Mark’ll be chuffed, I’m sure,’ BA5799 breathed back. ‘Good luck, Sarnt Collins.’

  Men lifted themselves off the ground, overcoming the weight of their kit, and moved out of the triangle to join the others. Once men had arrived to replace them and the line of soldiers had disappeared, there was a soft double pat on BA5799’s day-sack and we stood and followed off between the two buildings.

  *

  We took a different route back and the pace quickened as we neared safety. A band of light was seeping from the horizon when we stopped for the final time a few hundred yards from a squat, silhouetted watchtower. BA5799 pushed fingers up to itch below his helmet and then adjusted me against his eye.

  We entered the camp and a guard at the gate counted us in. Men broke off to different tents and buildings, the smell of cigarette smoke trailing them. BA5799 unloaded his weapon and ducked under a camouflage net into a building with aerials and a generator that rumbled outside.

  A man leant against the doorframe. ‘How was that, Tom?’ he asked.

  BA5799 unclipped his helmet and I swung wildly down to his side. My sensor was overloaded by light from the room in front of us. ‘Morning, Dave. Seemed to go smoothly,’ BA5799 said.

  ‘I just heard on the ops room radio they got to the checkpoint fine, by the way. Not a peep all night. The insurgents never seem to like the dark. But I’m sure they must know we’re moving about.’

  BA5799 put his helmet on a bench and I pointed up at him, bright green in the light of the door. ‘It was pretty eerie,’ he said. ‘Good to get out in the dark for the first time though.’ He slid his day-sack off and removed his armour, ripping the Velcro at the sides. He pinched his wet combat shirt away from his skin.

  ‘That’s your third time out, isn’t it?’ the man said. He held a mug that waved as he spoke. ‘We’ve got a framework patrol tomorrow. You can join in if you want. It’ll probably be a short one to check some empty compounds to the east.’

  ‘Fourth, if you include the one last night.’ BA5799 picked me up and unscrewed me from the helmet mount. ‘Any news on when the relief in place is due to start?’

  ‘We talked to HQ earlier – it’s still planned for two days’ time, largely by road but a few helicopter loads too. Most of your lot should be in by midweek,’ the man said. ‘I’ll be in the last packet out, leaving on Thursday.’ He drank from the mug. ‘We still need a couple more sessions in the ops room to complete the handover. Fancy a brew now?’ He pointed the mug at BA5799.

  ‘No thanks,’ BA5799 said and flicked my off switch. I was blind. He placed me in a small pouch. ‘I’m going to hit the sack. What time’s the next patrol?’

  ‘Be prepared from ten hundred.’

  ‘I’ll get a few hours then. See you later, Dave.’

  ‘Catch you in a bit.’

  11

  I’m attached to the wall by a wire. My serial number is 245-81-BS. I am a small white box with a red button labelled CALL. I’ve operated on Ward L4 since I was installed three years ago. Recently, the patients that use me have changed. Now they are young, fit men, often sun-tanned and sometimes with body parts missing. They can be angry but mostly they joke and go outside to smoke. The hospital has improved the food for them.

  Two nurses wheeled you in late one night when the ward was quiet and the lights had been dimmed. They pushed your bed up against the wall and moved a table next to you. Your mother was there and she thanked them. They smiled at you and said the team would collect you for surgery in the morning.

  Your mother sat next to you for a while and looked around the ward and at the shadows of other beds under the closed curtains. She told you this was an improvement. You felt sicker than you had since regaining consciousness but didn’t want to tell her that. You said you’d be fine now, that she should go and rest.

  She was worried about you. She knew the colour of your skin and the gleam of perspiration on your forehead was wrong. She asked if you were sure you were okay.

  You told her she needed some sleep; she said she’d be back in the morning before you went in. The pain you felt made it sound like you were exasperated with her, but you weren’t. And once she’d gone you wished you hadn’t sent her away, that she’d come back and stay with you. You were lonely and the shadows that walked up and down the corridor seemed very far away. You looked over at me resting on the table next to you and my wire running into the wall.

  The room closed in. You knew there were others, like you, in the beds nearby, but they were silent; it was late. And then the anxiety started to build. And the pain wrapped itself around the anxiety and you were scared. Someone walked past in the corridor and you called out to them, but your voice was still too weak and damaged from the bomb and the tubes the doctors had pushed down it. Nobody could hear you.

  Adrift in the nausea, you pleaded again but they kept disappearing, even though you called to them as loudly as you could.

  Something was happening in your right leg that you didn’t know about, nor did
the doctors. The leg was badly damaged and dragging you down. You sensed something wasn’t right. But you were a soldier and trained to endure and you didn’t want to bother anyone. So you endured and the pain grew where you knew an artery was weak and exposed – they’d told you about that.

  And the pain pushed hard into your leg until a huge weight crushed against your bone. You remembered you were meant to be brave and withstand the pain, a rite of passage, but you cried silently and were ashamed.

  You tried to shut it away but you were worried for yourself and it throbbed as part of a fear that was overwhelming. All you could experience was yourself. No past, no future, only loneliness. You thought you were a coward and the pain grew. The agony was everything and you wished you hadn’t been saved. It was the most despairing thing you’d ever thought. You wished they were with you.

  ‘Please come back,’ you said.

  You were sweating and thirsty. There was a plastic cup of water next to me. You tried to reach for it but couldn’t bend your arm. And you were too weak to shuffle across the bed. You lay still and panted and looked at the water you desperately needed. And then you tried again and you arched your back and pain seared through your damaged elbows.

  You knocked the cup over and it fell onto the floor and rolled around. You were angry and called for them again but your throat was now so dry no sound came out. Frustration distorted the agony.

  You could hear them joking by the nurses’ station – were they laughing at you? You reached for me and managed to grab hold. You let the pain win and pressed my button; you no longer cared about losing. You waited, panting and relieved that help was coming.

  Nothing happened. You longed to press me again but you didn’t want to cause a fuss. I was in your limp hand by the leg that hurt you so much, grotesquely swollen under the covers you’d soaked through.

  Still no one came. So you pressed me again and again and you worried that I was unconnected or broken, so you pressed my button down hard with your shaking thumb and held it there. You closed your eyes.

  *

  You were still. At the nurses’ station a few feet away, one of them said he’d handle it and the curtain around our bed was pulled back. He asked if you were okay, and when you didn’t reply he came closer.

  ‘Hello, are you all right? We were just doing our shift handover. I’m Paul,’ he said. ‘You must be our newest resident.’

  ‘Hello … help—’ You were feverish but didn’t want to show any weakness so you mastered it. ‘Help me, please. I’m in a bit of pain.’

  ‘Sorry, come again?’

  ‘I’m in a bit of pain,’ you shouted silently through chalky lips. ‘I’m very thirsty.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re on nil by mouth. You’ve got surgery planned early tomorrow.’

  ‘Please, just a sip.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you much. Oh, you knocked the cup off. You shouldn’t have had that anyway.’

  He wiped up the water and left, then a foot-pedal bin clattered in the corridor. You could hear them at the nurses’ station still laughing and you were desperate.

  Then he came back. ‘Here you go,’ he said, holding in plastic tweezers a small piece of blue foam that he placed on your tongue. ‘Try sucking on this.’

  The water was wonderful in your mouth, just too little. ‘Please,’ you croaked, ‘can I have a bit more?’

  ‘Just a little then.’ He removed the foam from your mouth and dunked it in a full cup.

  You sucked it dry, trying to get some of the liquid down inside you. ‘Can I please have a proper sip?’

  ‘Say again.’ He leant closer.

  ‘Please, a proper sip?’ you said, exaggerating your words.

  ‘I’m really sorry, your notes say nil by mouth.’

  ‘I’m in a bit of pain.’

  ‘Have you been prescribed any pain relief?’

  ‘I don’t know … Please.’

  ‘I’ll just go and check something.’

  He was gone for what felt like an eternity and you were as scared as you’d been in the helicopter. You wished it had never happened, wished it would end. You cried for yourself in the dark.

  When he came back he was with a young woman in a white coat. You were unconscious as they spoke about you.

  ‘He said he was in a bit of pain, poor chap,’ the nurse said. ‘But he’s not been prescribed any extra pain relief yet, just what he’s getting on IV. He only came up from the ICU this evening.’

  ‘Okay, he’s sleeping now anyway. He does look hot, mind,’ the doctor said. ‘Did you take his temperature?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he’s in theatre in the morning. He’ll be fine, just keep an eye on him and give me a buzz if he wakes.’

  You still held me in your hand as you sweated and mumbled through the rest of the night. The nurse and his colleagues looked around the curtain a few times, and finally he walked over, lifted me out of your loose grip and put me back on the table.

  *

  She was there in the morning with the red handbag by her chair. She could tell something was wrong.

  ‘Are you okay, darling?’ she said.

  You smiled and felt better for seeing her as you woke and wondered at how different the room looked in the daylight. But your leg still hurt and you found it hard to concentrate. Her face was creased and you didn’t want to upset her.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, Mum. It was a slightly rough night. I’m in a bit of pain.’

  You fell asleep again, or what seemed like sleep. Your mother was angry with the nurses and said you were suffering and that they should give you something. Then other nurses came, and a doctor who talked to her. She said you were going down for surgery now and that Dr Morris would explain it to her. But this would be a routine cleaning of the wounds, she added. Then they wheeled you away and your mother watched you go.

  *

  You did come back, but many days later. You were in a bed on the other side of the room from me. You looked different.

  12

  My first purpose was to hold my head down against the ground as I brushed sand out of a small, dirty room. It was an endless battle against the hot wind that curled around the doorframe. In time, my head loosened and the nail that held it on pulled free. Someone tried to push it back on, but my head swung round and fell off. I was discarded.

  That would have been the end of me – and my head was burnt with the rubbish – but I was reinvented and became useful again.

  He held me in both hands and leant on me at the edge of the flat piece of ground I was so used to. The speckled shadow of the camouflage net moved in the wind.

  ‘Where are they?’ he said.

  ‘Not sure, sir.’

  The flat ground was a square, framed with a line of sandbags and green string pulled tight across it to form a grid. Men sat around three sides of the square on old ammunition boxes and a low bench. They were in T-shirts and some held water bottles.

  ‘They might still be handing over guard,’ one of them said.

  ‘Corporal Davey, make sure you back-brief them,’ he said, then looked at his watch.

  ‘Will do, boss.’

  He straightened and held me in one hand. ‘Right, orders for tomorrow’s operation,’ he said. ‘We’re deploying most of the company for the first time and the whole platoon’s out together. It’ll be a standard route-security operation for the logistics convoy bringing in our supplies. There’s nothing complicated about this patrol, but we’ll be static for long periods and that will make us vulnerable. We have to clear all the road in our AO and then secure it so the convoy can travel safely through.’ He moved his hand up my shaft and used me to point at the flat ground.

  ‘Is everyone happy with the model?’ he said.

  There were a few silent nods from the watching men.

  ‘Just to orientate you again. This is our current location.’ He pointed me at a tiny block of wood near the centre of the grid that had PB43 written on it i
n peeling blue paint. It was the largest of a hundred little wooden squares placed carefully across the earth and numbered in black. ‘This is Route Hammer.’ He moved my end along a piece of orange ribbon that was pinned into the dirt. ‘And this blue ribbon represents the river that runs past Howshal Nalay.’ I swept along the ribbon over a denser group of wooden blocks. ‘These red markers are the IED finds in the last three months, so there’s quite a few on Hammer.’ I hovered over red pinheads.

  ‘Everyone’s been out a few times now,’ he said, looking up at them, ‘and we should all be getting familiar with the ground and heat. Those who came in by road last week will have seen the area to the northeast, along Route Hammer. The convoy will be coming down the same road tomorrow.’ My end touched a piece of green string, which vibrated. ‘This is the eighty-third easting,’ he said, ‘and will be our boundary with Six Platoon.’ He ran my tip along it until I was positioned where it intersected the orange ribbon. He stepped back and rested me on the ground. ‘Any questions at this stage?’ Most of the men continued to look down at the model. ‘Anything to add, Sarnt Dee?’

  ‘Nothing from me.’

  He started describing the plan and used me to direct their attention to different parts of the square. He said their mission was to secure the road and then provide rear protection. He told them how they would move out before first light and push along the orange ribbon, past the blocks with L33 and L34 written on them. I paused there as he explained how vulnerable this point was, and that one team would provide overwatch at the block marked M13 while others cleared the road.

  I was pointed at one of the men, who nodded that he understood.

  He told them how they would spread out between block L42 and the green string. Two other platoons would move through them and secure the orange ribbon farther up. Then he swept me over the zones they were most likely to be attacked from. He said the hardest part of the operation was to clear the crossroads at the area of interest named Cambridge; this was 6 Platoon’s responsibility. I hovered over where the orange ribbon was crossed by white tape.