Rain

by Barney Campbell

  They regained their courage and tiptoed back up to the gate in comic fashion, lifting their legs exaggeratedly high and placing their feet back on the earth with over-the-top softness. ‘Wait,’ said Tom to the sentry. ‘Pretend to look the other way.’ So they did, and the children came closer, unable to suppress their giggles. ‘Wait for it, wait for it … When I say, we turn and chase them, OK?’

  The sentry was also laughing. ‘Got it, sir.’

  The children came up almost to their backs, and at the last minute Tom whispered, ‘Now!’ and they both turned with a great roar.

  The children screamed and ran away, Tom and Borrowby chasing them for forty metres over a field next to the route. Tom was breathless with joy as he sprinted after the little boy, who laughed and skipped over the furrows. He stopped and bent over, choking with laughter. Taking a chocolate bar out of one of his pouches, he held it out to the boy, who shyly took it from him, ripped the corner open and gnawed at the hard chocolate. Tom turned and almost bumped into the girl, who looked up at him with huge eyes, hurt that she hadn’t also got a present. Tom patted his pockets apologetically to show he had none left.

  She looked crestfallen, and so he took a spare pen and notebook from his thigh pocket and handed them over. Her delighted eyes moved from the pen and book to Tom with a wide smile, and she said something in Pashto. Despite the freezing cold and her thin dress she didn’t shiver, and Tom held out his hand to shake hers. She looked up at him. He realized that he must look like an alien to her, towering in his body armour and helmet.

  He knelt down, took off his helmet and put his rifle on the ground as her brother sidled over, still munching on the chocolate. Again he held out his hand and left it there as they both looked at it. After a while the girl held out hers, very daintily grasped Tom’s fingers and shook them up and down. The boy then did the same. Tom saw that the boy was about the age he had been when his father had died. They stayed there in their little triangle, the girl testing the pen on the paper and the boy’s jaw the only sounds in the bitter breeze. Tom got up and walked back to Eiger. He turned back to watch them run away up Canterbury and gazed as the blue and yellow dots receded into the distance.

  They stayed in Eiger for most of the day. The generator was quickly replaced, but they had to wait for the padre to do his rounds. Tom wanted to leave in good time to do the home journey in daylight, and so the padre held his carol service at four o’clock. A Squadron gathered in a hollow square, 3 Troop mingling with them. They were to sing a couple of carols with a CD player providing a tinny accompaniment. A first, mumbling attempt at ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ was stopped halfway through the first verse by the squadron sergeant major, irate that none of the younger soldiers was singing.

  He strode out in front of the padre, who looked on with a wry smile as the SSM screamed at them, ‘Right, you cunts. It’s fucking Christmas, and you’d better start fucking enjoying it. Yeah, we all want to be home. Yeah, we all miss being on the fucking piss. Yeah, we all miss Christmas dinner with the family. Yeah, we don’t want to be in Afghan playing Mary fucking Poppins to the ANA. Well boo fucking hoo. Dry your eyes, sweetcheeks, and get with the fucking agenda. We’re here whether we like it or not, and if our mums and dads could see us they’d be sure as shit hoping we were singing our hearts out. So grow a pair and start sparking. Over the wall is Terry fucking Taliban. If he hears this fucking excuse for a carol service he’ll piss himself laughing. So let’s belt out these fucking carols and show him we’ve got some balls, yeah? Right. Take two.’ He turned to the padre and said politely, ‘Sorry about that, Padre; that should have done the trick.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Sergeant Major,’ he replied. ‘I’m afraid my sermon later isn’t going to be quite so colourful. Right everybody, let’s have another go at that.’ He pressed the play button and the boys shouted the carols till their voices were hoarse. After ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ the boys looked at each other grinning at how loudly they’d all sung and the padre began his sermon. Already the first hints of evening had come on and he noticed some of the boys beginning to shiver.

  ‘Well gentlemen, I can see the last thing you need is to hang around listening to an old codger like me bang on, but if you will give me two minutes then I would be most obliged. I just want to say that, as the sergeant major so … elegantly alluded to, this is a time when your thoughts will more than ever turn to your families. You will all be thinking about presents, about teasing your brothers and sisters, about desperately hoping to avoid being sat next to mad Great Aunt Doris at lunch. You will all be hoping to watch an episode of Dad’s Army on the telly; you will be thinking about making snowmen with your children, about the solemn rituals that every family has at this time of year. I’m afraid that I can’t promise you any of that here.

  ‘But I can promise you two things. Firstly, I can promise you a surrogate family. You may not realize it, but look around you now, at the men and women you have lived with, worked with and fought with over the past months. Who you have cried with. Bled with. Laughed with. One day, although you may not realize it now, you may, just may, look back on this group, gathered here far away from home, as a kind of family. I know I do. Goodness me, I miss my own children, although they probably do not miss me, snoring in front of the television and giving them books about Church history as presents, but when I look around me at meetings in HQ, on patrol when you let me come out with you, or when I see a barma team prepare to sweep a VP, I see something that is definitely a kind of family. So there, promise number one. You do have a family out here.

  ‘And secondly, I promise you this. You will all go home. One day all this will be over, and you will go back home and this will all seem like a dream. A vivid dream at first, and one that may take years to shift. For some of you it will be as firmly fixed in your mind’s eye in seventy years’ time as it was when you first got back. But the point is you will be looking back at it from home. And, even though some of us may not make it back whole, or indeed alive, none of us will be left out here. Everyone will go home and leave this strange and foreign place. So the home you are missing at the moment is a home that you will not be apart from for ever. I hope you manage to find some kind of peace in that thought. I am not going to stand here and bore you rigid with stuff from the Bible or any of that claptrap – though I can if you want – but I just thought that at this time, when our hearts tend more than ever towards home, we should all remember those two things. We do have a funny sort of family out here, and we will all go home. I hope that brings some comfort to you. I know it does for me. A very merry Christmas to you all.’

  He said a blessing and the huddle dispersed. Many soldiers came up to him to say thank you, and Tom let him stay and field their questions as he and the boys got the wagons ready. As they started the engines A Squadron’s 2ic Adam McAllister came out of Eiger’s ops room and beckoned Tom towards him. Annoyed at the delay, Tom got out the back of the Mastiff and jogged over. ‘What’s up, Adam? Could slightly do with getting a move on, mate.’

  ‘I know, I know, Tom. Chill your beans. We’ve just picked up some ICOM chatter that says that the Talibs might try to spring something at you on the way back.’

  ‘What? But we’re going to be inside the PB ring all the way. It’s a milk run. What are they saying?’

  ‘The usual. Stuff like “Get the big one ready for the big trucks.” That kind of thing.’

  ‘But they pull this all the time. They know we’re listening in. They’ll be saying it to get on our tits. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘I know, mate, I know. I’m only saying, that’s all. Just take care.’ He looked hurt and Tom regretted his peevishness. ‘Look, Adam, I’m really sorry. I’m being a tosser. I really appreciate it, mate. I know you’re looking out for us. Sorry, pal.’

  ‘Forget it, Tommy; no hard feelings. You’d better offski, schnell machen. We’ll keep you updated on the net if there’s any more.’

  ‘Thanks, bud.’ Tom
was already trotting back over to the Mastiff. ‘And merry Christmas!’

  The Mastiffs rolled out, stopping for the padre to tear himself away. In the back of Tom’s wagon Dusty hauled him in as they trundled out the gate and back up Canterbury. Tom briefed the others over the radio on the ICOM news. The red sun sank lower and lower on the horizon. Tom looked at his watch. An hour until dark.

  The wagons bumped in and out of the puddles in a bid to outrun the dark. Twice they had to stop to barma VPs where they were bottlenecked. The barma team swept over the first area with their customary thoroughness, and they were four hundred metres shy of Yukshal when they came to the second VP. After this they could trust that the route north, completely in sight of Yukshal and other checkpoints, was clear. It was now very gloomy; the sun had disappeared and its residual light was being dragged away after it.

  They halted at the VP, and the barma team spilt out of Jessie’s wagon. Tom’s wagon pulled up twenty metres behind them, and he watched with pride as the boys clinically and thoroughly swept the area, found nothing and then returned to their wagon. They relaxed at the doors, their tension melting away. That was the last barma in their capacity as the Mastiff troop; now they’d be back on the Scimitars and able to leave the role behind. Tom felt the strain drain away from him as well. After this VP all that remained was a clear run north. They’d be back in thirty minutes.

  Tom dropped inside his wagon and saw with amusement that both the padre and Dusty were snoozing in the back, lulled into sleep by the motion of the Mastiff as it bounced up the route. Over the intercom he bantered with Davenport, who was cocooned from the world in his driver’s seat.

  Tom got back up into the turret, and everything started to happen in slow motion. The barma team were still standing at the back of Jesmond’s wagon. About to shout forward to them to get on board and stop dallying, through the shadows to his right a movement flashed in the corner of his eye, and Tom swivelled the GMG out of an animal instinct more than any rational judgement. A dart of light blazed from about a hundred metres away; he saw a figure standing next to a compound wall, and he realized at once that it was an RPG man. He registered a huge explosion as the rocket hit Jessie’s wagon, garish white phosphorus shooting up into the early-evening sky.

  Still Tom kept the GMG turning, and suddenly he was looking down its sights at the man. Immediately and without thinking, he felt his freezing fingers switch the gun to fire and then his hand squeeze the trigger handle as he sent a hammering burst of eight grenades towards the gunman. They exploded all around him in firework-like flashes. Tom saw the man fall, pitching straight forward onto his face, and a spear of adrenaline fizzed through his brain. He realized at that moment what it was he had done: he had killed a man, and he had done it subconsciously, as an automaton. He wanted to scream with delight.

  He dropped down inside the wagon. ‘Dusty, Dusty, contact, contact! I just wasted an RPG man!’ Dusty was out of his seat. He popped open the hatch at the rear of the wagon and slickly unslung the gimpy strapped inside. Tom’s earphones sprung into life. It was Jessie.

  ‘Hello, Three Zero, this is Three Two. We have a casualty from the RPG. I say again, casualty. My Alpha Charlie callsign. Don’t know what’s wrong with him exactly. Over.’

  Tom’s throat went dry, and he looked out of the turret. His eyes struggled to readjust to the dark after the yellow light of the Mastiff’s interior. He couldn’t see Jessie’s wagon properly but could only make out in the dark a commotion at the rear of it. Over the intercom he said calmly, ‘Dav, headlights on.’

  Davenport flicked on the headlights and the scene in front of them appeared in surgical white. Three of the boys were kneeling down around another sprawled out on the ground. Through the earphones again came Jessie, panicked this time.

  ‘Yeah, Three Zero, Three Two. We’ve got real trouble here. Confirm Zap number Alpha Charlie Two Six Six Five. He’s bleeding really badly.’

  Tom felt his stomach leave him, and everything seemed to become silent. Acton. Acton was hit. Tom didn’t even really know him. He paused just for a second, which seemed to stretch over minutes. He felt a tiny bit of bile rise from his gut; he swallowed it down and then hit it, hit the zone. Things started to happen very quickly. He dropped back down inside, ripped his headphones off, grabbed his rifle from its slot, screamed, ‘Cover me, Stardust, cover me,’ pulled his way past the padre and jumped out the rear doors on to the frosty ground and turned to sprint up the track.

  He ran out of the dark into the light thrown by the headlights and came to the back of Jessie’s wagon. As he broke into their group GV looked up at him and said, ‘It’s all right, fellas. Boss here, boss here.’ Acton was lying on his back, his large round face pale with thin streaks of blood trickling from his nostrils. The boys had already put two dressings on his legs, which looked horribly torn. Blood oozed out of wounds where his trousers had been shredded away, but Tom could tell that they weren’t life-threatening; the blood was dark not arterial, and wasn’t coming out quickly. But he couldn’t work out why Acton was so white. He was convulsing in spastic, violent spasms, and was hardly responding to the boys’ efforts to get him to stay awake.

  Tom looked around him and saw Livesey vomiting and crying. ‘Hey, GV, get that cunt back in the wagon. Get him away from here.’ GV got up and hurled the cowering Livesey into the wagon. Tom focused back on Acton. Where was the blood coming from? Why did he seem to be so badly hurt? ‘Fellas, we need to strip him down, get his body armour off.’ Tom and Ellis tore off Acton’s Osprey, which revealed his saturated under-armour shirt. When Tom pulled this up a great flood of blood spread out from his torso, washing over the white ground and, unable to soak into the hard earth, drenching their knees.

  ‘Where the fuck’s his wound? Where the fuck’s the wound?’ said Tom as he ripped his shemagh from his neck and furiously tried to dab away the blood to see any sign of skin rupture. He felt like an art expert feeling a piece of silver which he knew, somewhere, had a dent in it. But where was it? ‘More light, we need more light.’ The headlights were helpful but they kept on throwing shadows over the convulsing torso. One of the boys flicked his head torch on. ‘Good lad. Keep that light there, keep that light there.’ Tom kept mopping away the blood. And then he saw it. It was a cut, only about an inch long, where Acton’s ribcage met his right armpit. Blood, frothy and scarlet, was pouring freely out of it. ‘OK, OK, we’ve got the bleed, we’ve got the bleed. Someone give me a fucking hemcon.’

  Again the boys’ drills showed. All the lessons and reruns that Tom and Trueman had insisted on back in the summer in the green Pembrokeshire fields paid off, and Ellis whipped out a hemcon from his med pouch. ‘Ell, get that in there.’ Ellis went to work, and Tom was able to step back from the bleeding and shivering torso, the white flesh stark against the black around it. Acton’s mouth was now frothing blood, and he was choking. Tom realized he was about thirty minutes, max, away from death, if he was lucky. He had no idea how long he’d been over the body; he had to get on the net to start the casevac. If Acton didn’t get to a MERT within half an hour he’d bleed out. Tom had no idea of the extent of internal bleeding. He climbed into Jessie’s wagon.

  ‘Jessie, here’s the plan. I’m going to get Yam-Yam back into my car; there’s too many lads in yours and Three One’s got the generator in it. Send this to battle group while me and GV get Yam-Yam to mine. Get Minuteman Nine One on the line and tell him that we’ve got a Cat A and we’re going to get him best speed to Newcastle. Tell him to get the MERT moving to Newcastle’s HLS. Roger?’

  ‘Got it, boss.’

  ‘Also tell him that if he can, get the QRF to crash out with the doc in it, and see if we can meet him on the way. He desperately needs a doc and I reckon a shedload of blood and IV. The sooner he can get an expert the better. Clear?’

  ‘Clear, boss.’

  ‘Right, GV and I will get Yam-Yam back. When he’s in my wagon GV will run forward to you, and when he’s back, that�
�s your signal. Hell for leather all the way home. Stop for nothing until we RV with the doc. OK?’

  ‘No dramas, boss.’ Jessie switched to the battle group net and started sending to BGHQ: ‘Hello, Minuteman Zero, this is Tomahawk Three Two. Reference that Cat A casualty, plan from my Sunray. Over …’

  Tom jumped back out onto the ground and briefed up the boys. Snow now swirled in the headlights. Acton was breathing softly and shivering as they tried to keep him warm and his wounds plugged. ‘Boys, on the wagon, now. GV, you’re good to take Yam-Yam back to Three Zero, aren’t you?’ He had to be. GV was the only person in the squadron of even remotely comparable size to Acton, and they had no stretcher.

  ‘Yeah, boss, I got him. It’s good. It’s good.’

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  They hauled Acton up and heaved him onto GV’s shoulders, who panted under the weight. He set off but slipped on the dark blood congealing on the ground and dropped his cargo. He lay there sprawled, his limbs intertwined with Acton’s.

  ‘Fuck fuck fuck. Sorry, boss. I slipped. Let me try again.’

  Acton moaned with pain. They picked him up again and this time GV was all right.

  ‘GV, let’s go! GV, let’s go!’

  The boys got back on board as GV stumbled down the track, Tom hustling behind him, still in the headlights of Three Zero and with no cover at all. And then, above the hum of the engines from their left, automatic fire came at them, and shafts of tracer pummelled into the earth at their feet and fizzed between them. ‘Fuck fuck fuck!’ said Tom. He switched his rifle to automatic and on the run, from the hip, unloosed the entire magazine in a three-second burst back in the direction of the muzzle flashes.