Authors: Barney Campbell
As she left work that night she looked at her phone for the first time since lunch. There were no messages. She knew there were parties happening tonight, that she could have rung a few people and got herself invited to any number of things, but she didn’t. She walked all the way back home from
work, handrailing the river. She enjoyed the expectant Christmas air, which had finally been augmented by wintry weather, and the pregnant broiling Thames, which her walk caught right at the fulcrum between high and low tides. An hour and a half later she reached Albert Bridge. She thought about crossing to touch the bollard again, but she was cold and wanted to get inside the house and watch television and chat with her mother over a glass of wine. She left the bridge uncrossed but, as compensation, again in her head went over her prayer for Tom.
Two days before Christmas Frenchie brought the Scimitars back into Newcastle. SHQ and two of the troops had been on the ground for three weeks, roving around in the far north of the province, interdicting Taliban supply routes and providing a mobile punch to prevent out-of-area fighters coming in from the north. It was the kind of role the boys loved, recalling the Western Desert and the Long Range Desert Group.
As they rolled in Tom looked on with envy. All the boys had wild, unkempt beards, had each lost at least a stone, and their clothes hung off them. Dust was ingrained in every pore, and it took each of them at least ten minutes in the freezing showers to get remotely clean. Some of them had frost nip on their earlobes; all had cracked lips, cut fingers and a dry cough. Skin was stretched over sallow cheeks like parchment. None of them had had any fruit or vegetables for the whole operation. Tom felt guilty that he hadn’t been on the ground with them.
They greeted Tom and his boys with friendliness but with an undercurrent of sanctimonious resentment that insinuated that 3 Troop had somehow deliberately chosen the easier path. As ever, Frenchie read the situation correctly as
he chatted with Tom in the scoff tent in the evening and heard all his news.
‘Don’t you worry. I know you’re jealous of what we’ve just done. But fear not, my son, because you’re now back with the gang. Two more days, and you’re in the Scimitars.’
‘Was there much
scrapping
?’
‘Not really. I mean, nothing major. Nothing worse than that retreat-from-Moscow-style debacle we had back in the cluster when you were shitting through the eye of a needle. I mean, the boys will bang on about a few contacts here and there, especially up in the north, but they weren’t exactly the tractor factory at Stalingrad. The main thing was the conditions, which were horrendous. Whenever we leaguered up during that rainy period it was like the Somme. On to you. I’ve heard great things about you boys back here.’
‘I don’t know about that; it hasn’t exactly been rocket science. Clearing routes, clearing routes, waiting for ATO, waiting for ATO, all day long.’
‘Don’t knock it. If it’s dull then you’re doing it well. I’d rather dullness and steadiness over cutting corners and me then having to write letters to a couple of parents telling them how sorry I am their son’s been ripped into constituent parts. Dull is good. It means good drills. Capiche?’
‘I know, Frenchie,’ Tom said apologetically. ‘But I can’t deny we’re not keen to get back on the Scimitars.’
‘That’s the spirit, sunshine. And I think we’re about to be in the hot seat. Every bit of gossip I hear about this op tends towards the idea that whatever happens in it, wherever in the goddamn AO it is, we’re going to be pretty high on the billing.’
He got up to go back to the canteen, and returned with a bowl brimming with more carrots and peas. ‘That’s better. First fresh veg I’ve had in weeks. Anyway, tell me more about
living it large back here in
slipper city
.’ He waited to see Tom’s nostrils flare. ‘Only joking. Christ, you’re highly strung! It’s like when I tell my wife that she’s looking nice, and she bursts into tears and bangs on about how that means I think she looks fat. You know what women are like. Just like troop leaders. If your egos aren’t massaged every minute of the day you end up suicidal. Women and troop leaders. Peas in a pod. And both the banes of my life.’
‘How is your wife?’
‘So so. I spoke to her a couple of times on the satphone while we were on the ground. But we keep it businesslike, just sorting out boring stuff like school fees. Doesn’t really do to dwell on it really. It’s fine. I mean, we’ve been married for eight years, and this is my third tour since then. We cope. Certainly a hell of a lot better than other marriages do. But where it’s really hard is with the children. That’s who you really miss.’
‘How are they?’
‘Fine. Fine, I think. Alex misses me terribly, I know. Apparently when he gets home from school he goes and finds a bit of my army kit and puts it on, as though he’s the guard of the house, and then patrols the garden. I think he took my instructions that he look after his mother a bit too literally.’
Frenchie paused, and lost in thought pushed some peas around with his fork. Tom could see the creases around his eyes. He looked exhausted.
‘I have this daydream. Whenever we halt or whenever I’m on the brink of sleep, for some reason all I think about is me and him, next summer, at the first day of the Lord’s Test match, watching a game of cricket on a boys’ day trip to London. I’ve got the whole thing planned. I just can’t stop thinking about that day. I suppose when it finally happens it
will signify the end of tour proper. I mean, psychologically. You always take a few months to wind down.’
He scooped up the final peas in his bowl and poured them into his mouth.
‘And you know what? I bet you, I bet you, that when we do go and watch that match it’s rained off.’
Christmas Eve was 3 Troop’s last day on the Mastiffs and they were tasked to ferry two bits of cargo down Route Canterbury to PB Eiger. Trueman’s wagon carried a generator to replace a broken one, and in Tom’s wagon was the padre, going to Eiger to conduct a Christmas Eve carol service for A Squadron.
A man of considerable girth, short and with thick round glasses that gave him the air of Mole from
Wind in the Willows
, the padre barely fitted into any of his clothes and Tom thought he might struggle to fit inside the back of the Mastiff. He chain-smoked little Hamlet cigars, of which he had an inexhaustible supply, had white hair and looked far, far too old for the job. Everyone suspected that he had lied about his age, and there was a rumour that he and an old chief of the general staff had been at school together or some such, and that strings had been pulled to get him out on the ground. He had been vicar of a slum parish in Liverpool, and after the Iraq War started he had volunteered for the Territorial Army. He had done a tour in Iraq, where he had taken a shot in his helmet. He had a calm, soft voice and a bookish air.
The boys loved him, and even the most taciturn and tough of the nineteen-year-olds would open up to him. For that reason the CO made him one of the busiest men in the AO, and he was always visiting the troops on the ground, to his obvious delight. He never carried a weapon, and when Tom asked him before leaving if he wanted a pistol, he reached inside his pocket and patted a dog-eared Bible. ‘Not to worry, Thomas;
this is all the defence I need. Well, and this, I suppose.’ He drew out a huge hip flask from his other pocket, unscrewed the top and took a glug before offering it to Tom as though he was administering Communion.
Tom gleefully swigged from it. ‘Christ, Padre. I mean, bloody hell, Padre, what on earth is that? Rocket fuel?’
‘Not quite, Thomas. Napoleon brandy. On the few occasions when God can’t save me, then that French bastard might just.’
The four wagons left camp and headed south. Jesmond led with the barma team, then came Tom, then Thompson and then Trueman. Over the past few days a heavy frost had settled. The puddles on the route were glazed with ice that nearly held the weight of a soldier, even with all his kit. While barmaing one of the VPs Acton, to amuse the others, had jumped up and down on one without realizing how deep the puddle was beneath him, broke the ice and plunged in up to his thighs. The earth turned into rock-like chunks, and to dig into the ground to investigate a metal reading required several minutes of chipping away with screwdrivers.
As they trundled down the route Tom waved from his turret to farmers trying to get ancient tractors to defy the petrol-freezing cold. About a kilometre from Eiger two children appeared from behind a compound, a boy and a girl, and ran alongside the wagons, waving at them. They kept up all the way to Eiger, and once the Mastiffs were safely inside the camp and Tom had caught up with the news from down there he walked to the front gate, where the sentry was laughing with the two children. Tom recognized him. ‘Morning. Borrowby, isn’t it? How’s tricks?’
‘Aye not bad, sir, but it’s fucking shanking out here.’ He blew on his hands, and his breath enveloped his face as he hacked away a cough. ‘These kids are the best bit of it.’ He laughed as
they pulled faces and chased each other around. ‘They always come down here, every day. They’re brother and sister.’
He broke off suddenly to pretend to chase them away, and the children, squealing with delight, ran off and hid behind a dead tree, smirking as they peeked out from behind it. The girl was about thirteen, with high cheekbones and a beautiful smile. Her long hair was wild and shiny, and her immaculate yellow dress stood out, violent saffron against the frosted brown earth and the milky grey sky. The boy was the only other source of colour in the dead land, his blue dish-dash dirtier than his sister’s dress but still strikingly bright.
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.