Anatomy of a Soldier

by Harry Parker

  He was sitting in a small room on a Z-framed camp bed. Attached to it was a domed mosquito net. The other man in the room found his one of me in a grip and pulled it on.

  They walked through a courtyard and across the camp. The hot afternoon sun pressed down on my green wool. We went under a camouflage net raised on poles and out into an open area enclosed by the perimeter of the base. To one side vehicles and trucks were parked in rows on the oil-stained sand.

  Men gathered. They had kicked up a cloud of dust that hung at knee level. Slowly they found their positions, forming three sides of a square as commanders quietly jostled them into straight lines. Most of them wore berets like me, with the cap badge of a bugle over the left eye.

  We stood apart from them. He adjusted me on his head and waited, his eyes squinting against the low sun.

  *

  A padre walked up to the open side of the square and looked at the three blocks of formed men. Crosses were sewn on his collar and a dark cloth hung over his shoulders and down the front of his camouflaged uniform.

  He spoke to them of remembrance and loss, and said they should pray. He told them about a conqueror of death, here in their time of need, who in the presence of death comforts those who mourn.

  I tilted forward as he listened to the padre. He wanted to remember and to register the loss but he didn’t feel anything. He inched his head up and looked at the men across the square, friends of the man who’d died. They could feel it; he could see it on their faces. He didn’t want the loss to weaken him, though, couldn’t let himself imagine it was something that might happen to him. That would paralyse him.

  The padre continued talking and his mind drifted and he thought about the patrol tomorrow, how best to tell them the plan during orders. His men were doing well but he didn’t want to let up on them; it was too soon and they still had so much to achieve.

  They were told to pray together and my leather band flexed around his skull as he mouthed the familiar words. He knew the prayer without thinking and the words hummed out along with those of the men around him.

  He wondered if they would encounter the enemy tomorrow; he wanted to be tested and he imagined fighting along a ditch and overcoming them. He was jealous of the platoons that had seen more action. He needed his men to be the best, his platoon to be the most respected.

  Now the padre was talking about the man who had died, and he wanted to feel sad but instead felt empty. He didn’t care. All that mattered was scrawled on the orders sheet in his pocket.

  The padre finished talking and a man standing to one side lifted a bugle to his lips and played a piercing tune they all knew. His hand jerked up and the end of his second finger touched my wool and he held it there in a salute. The bugle sounded again and they all started to walk away.

  As we headed back towards the camouflage netting, someone asked if he wanted a brew. He took me off and sat beneath a tarpaulin on a wooden plank behind a table. He folded me in on myself and laid me on the plastic table cover. They talked and sipped from metal mugs. The sky turned orange and he thought how much like a hotel by the Mediterranean it was. Soon they were playing cards.

  *

  Later, after they had boiled foil bags of food and poured Tabasco into them, after they’d passed a satellite phone around so each of them could walk to a private corner of the camp and call home, he went to the room and zipped me back in the top of his day-sack. He hoped he wouldn’t have to take me out again.

  19

  There were three nurses over you, looking down and smiling. They’d worked around the bay and now it was your turn. One of them talked to you about how you were feeling and what the weather was like. Another said your parents would be back at eleven. They joked and you laughed with them about how one of the nurses had dented her car that morning. The laughing hurt.

  One of them dissolved colourful pills into a pink slurry and squirted it from a syringe into a feeding tube that looped into your nose and down to your stomach. You felt the chalky liquid inside you.

  I went into you too. I fed into your penis and up your urethra to your bladder. They had pushed me inside when you were unconscious. That was in another country. You were very ill then. They inflated my balloon in your bladder and it held me tight. Your urine trickled out down my silicone tube and collected in a bag at my other end. The bag was replaced every time it was full.

  If it wasn’t for me, you’d be lying in a patch of your own piss.

  The nurses pulled the sheets from you and started to wash you with flannels. Tender but efficient, they started with your face before washing around the dressings that covered your stumps and your arms and your left hand. They washed under your armpits and then held me up and washed around where I entered you. You could feel me, solid and foreign down its middle. You weren’t embarrassed: there was no other option.

  Two of them lifted one side of you, then the other, and washed your back. They pulled away the old clammy sheet and replaced it. You grimaced and one asked you if you were okay and said it wouldn’t be long. You breathed through clenched teeth as the pain seared from your stump. They pulled the fresh sheet beneath you and tucked it under the mattress.

  Another attached a bag of brown food to a hook above and the sludge started to slip down the feeding tube through your nose. They checked where the cannula entered a vein in your arm and pushed the plunger on a syringe to give you more relief. They passed you a glass of water and your hand shook as you craned your neck forward to drink. Before moving on, they hooked up a bag full of bright yellow drugs that dripped into you to stop an infection from taking hold. It made you feel horrid.

  You thanked them.

  They went to the next bed, talking to one another but not joking any more. Whoever was in that bay wasn’t conscious and the curtain stayed closed. You’d been like that when they first cleaned you.

  *

  You looked out the window. The air couldn’t hold the heat of summer and the clouds were piling up, it would rain and perhaps thunder. But you fell asleep. Your mother and father came later, your brother was with them too. You woke up and talked with them. After a while, your parents went for coffee and said they were seeing one of the doctors at twelve.

  Your brother pulled up a chair between you and the window and said, ‘How are you, Tom?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. Slightly painful today,’ you told him.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing.’

  ‘Let me see if I can get someone.’ He looked around the bay.

  ‘Honestly, it’s nothing.’

  You watched him; he’d become so determined. He knew everything about your injuries, every medical term, everything they planned to do to you, what it meant and what the outcomes would be, every last percentage, and he wouldn’t let the doctors and nurses rest or not give a straight answer. You loved him for it.

  ‘Please, David. I’m fine. It’ll pass.’

  ‘Won’t be long,’ he said and went for help.

  A nurse came back with him.

  ‘Are you okay, Tom?’ she said.

  ‘I’m slightly uncomfortable. My leg hurts, and my back. I’ll manage, though.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Tom, this isn’t an endurance test. No one’s judging you on how much you can tough out. You don’t need to be in any pain.’ She was smiling while studying your notes. ‘The pain is optional, and if I were you, I’d opt for none.’

  She gave you something, you didn’t really register how but it wrapped around you and the pain went and it was wonderful. She said she might have given you a bit more than she should and winked.

  Your brother told you about the family and how everyone was thinking of you. You told him about the future and what you would achieve. The drugs gave you confidence and you talked to him about where you’d been and what it had been like.

  The drugs made you sway from euphoria to nausea. They’d separated you from your body; it was unnatural but better than the pain. The energ
y that let you talk was suddenly gone and you needed to sleep, so your brother left.

  The bag hanging at the end of me was full, and while you slept a nurse came to unplug it and attach a new one. I’d been in you for three weeks now, during all your surgeries, when they washed your wounds and cut more of you away. Afterwards, I had been wiped clean of blood and bone dust.

  When you next woke, the ward was quiet. You were uncomfortable and looked out of the window. You tried to move but the muscles you strained were either damaged or fixed in new, unnatural positions. Some were severed, others didn’t exist any more and synapses fired at nothing. Shocks speared back from the confusion of cut nerve endings among the trauma. You lay still as your foot was peeled open and salt was poured in and you looked down at the empty space of flat blanket where the pain bolted from.

  You waited for it to pass. You could feel me snaking from your groin across your abdomen and you counted the cords and pipes that fed in or out of you, each one invading your sense of self. You would die in a sloppy pool of your own excrement and agony if you weren’t plugged into this wall of machines, if we weren’t here to take away discharge and feed the drugs and medicines into you. You understood how completely dependent you were.

  While you’d slept, someone new had been brought into the bay. He was conscious and sitting up as his family and the doctors talked tenderly to him. They surrounded him and you watched them. White cotton pads were taped over his eyes and his head swept from side to side in disorientation. His family seemed worried and the doctors tried to explain.

  *

  Later, after the physiotherapist had told you how to squeeze a rubber ball with your only undamaged limb, after your parents had given you a cold yogurt, the lights were dimmed in the ward.

  The man who had just arrived was silent but upright, leaning against a stack of pillows. You wondered if he was asleep. And then he moved.

  ‘Colonel, is that you?’ he said. ‘I’m going, Colonel.’

  He moved his head and you watched him and wondered who he was talking to.

  ‘Are you okay, mate?’ you said. But your voice was still damaged and he didn’t hear you.

  ‘Zero Alpha, this is One Zero Delta, I’m moving. Over,’ he said. His head rolled. He chopped his arm down.

  ‘Where are they? No, don’t. Don’t do that,’ he said and was quiet for a while.

  You pressed your help button and a nurse came over.

  ‘You okay, Tom?’ she said.

  ‘That new bloke has been saying a few odd things to himself.’

  She looked over at him. ‘He’s been a bit confused since he got here, poor thing.’ She walked over and rested a hand on his arm. ‘John, it’s Mel, I’m a nurse—’

  ‘What? Get back,’ he said and lashed out blindly. She moved away.

  ‘John, it’s okay. You’re safe now. You’re in hospital in England.’

  ‘I need to get to the patrol base.’

  They tried to calm him down but drugs and trauma kept him from the truth. They asked if you’d talk to him. You tried to call across the bay but your voice wouldn’t carry. They released the brakes on your bed and wheeled you over to him.

  I hung down between the beds. He had one of me as well and you talked to him above us.

  ‘John, my name’s Tom,’ you said.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he said. ‘I need to speak to the colonel. Something’s gone wrong.’ The white pads stared past you.

  ‘I know, John. Can you hear me?’

  ‘I don’t know you. I must speak to the colonel. It’s dreadful. We must get back or he won’t make it.’

  ‘I know. I’m Tom Barnes. I’m a captain. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. Listen to me. You’ve been injured. Do you realise that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are home now, John. You’ve been flown back,’ you said. ‘We’re in hospital.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. His head had dropped.

  ‘The colonel isn’t here. But everyone’s helping you now. You’re safe. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Captain Tom,’ he said. There were red pockmarks across his face and his lip was held together by black stitches. ‘I’m sorry. I was just confused.’

  ‘No worries, John. I’m injured too. They give us ketamine and other drugs that can make you see strange things. It’s not real. You’re safe now. I’m just across the ward from you. Give me a shout if you want to talk.’

  The nurses wheeled you back and mouthed thank-yous and smiled. It had exhausted you.

  *

  In the morning they replaced my bag again and washed around your penis, holding me out so it was like a piece of meat on a skewer. You marvelled again at the deep purple bruise on it and wondered how much that must have hurt.

  The doctors came and stood at the end of the bed to discuss you. It felt odd being below them, their notepads open as they talked about your injuries. You were flat and helpless and not part of it. One of them said you would be moving back up to L4 soon. You were ready; they were just waiting for a bed.

  The man on the other side of the room was asleep when they came for us. They wheeled us through the corridors and my bag, half full of your piss, swayed beside the bed. People were moving around the hospital, normal people who’d come in through the front door: a decrepit man heading for a cigarette, rolling a drip beside him; a fat woman in a wheelchair complaining to a nurse, she was quiet when she saw you; and a bald child who never stopped staring. You felt odd being among people who noticed you were different.

  We waited in the lift and then were in the new ward. We had been here before; you’d been very dehydrated and the urine that passed along me had been brown. You’d been in pain and they hadn’t realised how ill you were. That was before they had to cut away your remaining leg. I’d been there for that.

  We were taken to a bay where four men were sitting on their beds or in wheelchairs. The nurses pushed you to a free space in the corner. One man was missing a leg and his stump was so short it didn’t cover the cushion he sat on. He’s had it bad, you thought.

  You were introduced to each of them and they all said hello. One said they’d been waiting for a double amputee to come to their bay. He said between them they had five legs and eight arms, they were now beating bay 4. You smiled.

  During visiting hours, the ward filled with people; friends and family of the other men. They all introduced themselves and said they were happy to have a new member of the team. They offered fruit and sweets and magazines. A shiny helium balloon floated over one of the tables.

  But then nurses hooked the yellow bag of drugs to you again and it flushed through your blood and made you feel desperate. The light was too bright and the noise too loud. Your father was there and you asked him to close the curtains. You listened to the throb of voices and laughter from behind the blue curtain as you sweated and waited for the side effects to pass.

  *

  I stayed in you for another week. We went down to theatre for more surgery and you were knocked out again by anaesthetic. They smiled down at you and you joked with them as they held the gases over you and told you to count to ten and you were obliterated before you got to four. Once more, they opened your bandages and were happy that the infection had disappeared; they stripped layers of skin from your thighs and applied them over open raw wounds. These grafts took and the doctors were pleased with your progress.

  A nurse came and said it was time to take me out. You sat up and watched as she deflated my balloon, which collapsed in your bladder. She held your penis out straight, pulled, and I scratched down your urethra causing a sharp pain. You flinched, sucking your stomach in, and finally I was free.

  20

  A man came up the aisle I was in looking at his phone. He wanted me but hadn’t spotted me yet. He stopped to type a message into his phone and put it away in his jacket pocket. Then he saw me, reached up and lifted me off the hook. He found the ca
n farther down the shelf. He went to the counter and paid, and I was in a plastic bag with the can as he walked out of the shop.

  *

  When he took me out of the bag, he was sitting by his son’s bed and he put me on a table. A blue curtain surrounded them. It was quiet, the lights dim.

  ‘How are you, Tom?’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ his son said. ‘So, how are we going to do this?’

  ‘I’ll just go and get some towels and an extra pillow. I’ll find a nurse.’ He stood up and pushed the curtains apart.

  ‘Don’t get thrown out, Dad.’

  ‘No chance. Visiting hours are a bloody nuisance.’

  When he came back, he propped his son’s head up and pushed a pillow under his neck. ‘It’s about time, Tom. You look like you’ve been boozing for a month,’ he said. He picked up the can next to me and squirted foam into his hand.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been boozing for a month,’ his son said.

  ‘And your grandparents are visiting tomorrow,’ he said as he spread the shaving foam on his son’s face with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Yup, we don’t want to give them too much of a shock,’ his son said. ‘No legs and a beard – I’m not sure they’d know where to look.’

  ‘Quite.’ He pushed the foam over the chin and up to the ears, then wiped his hands on a towel and picked me up. He dunked me into a plastic mug of hot water and rattled me against its sides. ‘Right, hold still, Tom.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  He held me over the face. It was bent backwards so the neck was exposed. And then I was against his skin and pulling across him, cutting through bristly hairs on his neck that caught in the white soap, collecting on my blades.

  ‘How’s that?’ he said. I was in the cup again and the hairs washed off me.

  ‘Fine. Feels quite nice actually.’

  He used me to clear tracks in the foam and cut the beard away, curving me carefully around the hollows and contours of his son’s jaw. He looked down at him and thought how much thinner he seemed – how sickly, disappearing in front of them. The yellow bag of drugs hung beside him, dripping through the needle in his arm. The man knew it was saving his son from infection and he needed to endure it. He would never be the same again and he was terrified about his future and wondered how long they’d need to care for him.