Authors: Barney Campbell
‘About fifteen minutes till we meet the doc.’
The padre paused, and his voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Then it’s touch and go.’
Tom pressed two fingers gently against Acton’s neck, and counted over ten seconds the faint pulse trying to throb blood into his brain. They were very far apart. Three beats per ten seconds. Pulse rate of eighteen. He leaned closer to him, put his ear over his mouth and counted his breaths over another ten seconds. Deep inside his lungs he could hear a frothy wheezing. Two breaths over ten seconds. Breathing rate twelve. Not as bad as the pulse. He looked over the whole body and saw the FFDs on his legs, the hemcon the padre was holding in place in his side and the letter M scrawled in blood on his forehead, after Ellis had whacked him with morphine. At least he was out of pain.
‘Hello, Minuteman Nine One. Tomahawk Three Zero reference that MIST serial Sierra: pulse eighteen, breathing twelve. Unconscious. We think he’s got a severe internal
bleed in his torso. His lungs sound very bad, frothy and bubbly. Roger so far? Over.’
‘Minuteman Nine One roger.’
‘Tomahawk Three Zero serial Tango: two FFDs on either leg, hemcon in his torso wound, one times morphine. End of MIST. Over.’
‘Minuteman Nine Zero roger. That’s understood. Over.’
Then another callsign butted in. ‘Minuteman Nine One, this is Minuteman Eight Two.’
It was the doc.
‘Understood all that. Tomahawk Three Zero just keep that bleeding plugged. I’m on my way south with saline for your Alpha Charlie casualty. Over.’
Yes
. Tom felt the whole battle group’s weight kick in behind him. Maybe they could save Acton after all.
Tom looked at him more closely. His breathing remained torturous and slow. The convulsions had stopped in the warm Mastiff, and Tom noticed his chest, with barely a hair on it, was heavily tattooed. A dirty film of blood lay dried over his skin. He mopped Acton’s brow and stroked his hair. ‘There you go, Yam-Yam. There you go. We’re going to get you home.’ He looked at his watch. Twenty past five. Christmas Day in a few hours. He thought about the news that Mrs Acton was about to get.
Christ!
He didn’t even know if Yam-Yam was married or had any children. Ever since Acton had arrived he had always meant to interview him, to find out more about him, but had never got round to it. Did he even have a family? Any siblings? He must have a mother. He felt ashamed that he hadn’t bothered to find out.
His eyes welled up and, not wanting to show any weakness in front of the padre, he opened the hatch that Dusty had been firing out of at the ambush and stuck his head out into
the sharp, biting air. He drew it deeply into his lungs. The wagons drove at a frantic pace through the snow. He looked down inside the wagon at the wound, with the padre’s fingers stuffed inside it. The skin around it was black and scorched by the heat of the shrapnel as it had passed into him. Where was that piece of shrapnel? There was no exit wound. It could be lodged anywhere – in his heart, in his lungs. In his spine? He looked up again out of the wagon, and there, in the distance, he saw headlights coming towards them. The QRF. The doc. Through the IC he shouted, ‘Dav, foot down, foot down. The doc’s here.’
And then they were there, and he was kicking open the back doors and the doc came aboard carrying two bags of saline and with another medic. The wagon was now ridiculously crowded. ‘Padre, get forward to the front cab!’ The padre squirmed his egg-like form forward to free up space as the medics went about their work immediately and wordlessly, and then they were on the move again. Only ten minutes now till Newcastle.
Over the radio came Jules. ‘Hello, Tomahawk Three Zero, Minuteman Nine One. Understood you have the Eight One callsign. MERT inbound and eight minutes out of Newcastle. Best speed over.’
‘Tomahawk Three Zero roger. QRF RV seamless. Doc now on the casualty. We’ll get him to the MERT, don’t worry. Out.’ He turned to the doc. ‘Doc, what do you reckon?’
The doctor looked up, his face spattered with Acton’s blood. He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Tom; I just don’t know.’ Acton started spasming, and the doc muttered, ‘Bollocks. He’s arresting.’ Every jolt of Acton’s torso seemed to rock the wagon as much as any pothole in the track. The doc gave Acton CPR, inflating his broken lungs with his own breath. Tom saw Acton’s chest slowly reinflate. Twice the doc did it.
Then a third time. And a fourth. No response. And then a tiny choke, a tiny splutter. Finally the chest started moving by itself, slowly, painfully slowly. The doc looked exultant. ‘I think I got it! I think I got it!’
At last the column rolled into sight of Newcastle. When they were two hundred metres away a great black shadow studded with lights swooped overhead, barely fifty metres off the ground, and Tom shouted to the wagon, ‘It’s the MERT; the MERT’s here!’ The dark shape of the Chinook braked over the HLS and spiralled down to a soft landing.
The wagon came through the gate and into camp, Tom opened the doors and Brennan was there with a stretcher party. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Chamberlain, we got him.’ He patted Tom on the back as Acton was carried out of the Mastiff and put onto a stretcher.
The boys set off at a run up the low hill to the HLS, the doc next to them carrying the saline bag. Tom jogged behind and noticed tiny drips of Acton’s blood spill from his chest onto the shuffling boots of the stretcher bearers. The doc yelled, ‘Faster, boys, faster; he’s arresting again.’ On the stretcher Acton started his second cardiac arrest as his heart cried out for more blood, his writhing and juddering slowing their dash through the camp.
Soon they felt the warm blast of the exhausts as they neared the heli. They ran on board into the dark womb of the MERT; the doc shouted some information to the emergency physician on board, then they were off again, and the bird rocketed back into the sky, lights flashing in concert with the stars above it as it lifted way up into the clear night and back to Bastion.
Tom stood there dazed as the doc, Brennan and the stretcher party left him alone for a couple of minutes to gather his thoughts. Enveloped by the sudden silence, he
walked back down the hill to the 3 Troop Mastiffs and found the boys gathered around his wagon. Blood was everywhere: on the floor, on the walls. Spent cases from the gimpy studded the floor, the tank park floodlights picking out their brass against the dark red.
Tom reached the group. He wished he had had more time to compose himself, but now would have to do. He felt fierce and proud. ‘Fellas, Yam-Yam’s on the heli; he’s with the docs now. I don’t know if he’s going to make it.’ They looked down at the ground. No one spoke so he continued: ‘I just want to say that I am incredibly proud of every one of you. I can’t believe we managed to turn that around. Every man of you stepped up. And you,’ he turned to GV, ‘you absolute fucking madman. You ever do that again I’m going to court-martial you. You gave me a heart attack, you great ox. Come here.’ He went forward and gave GV a bear hug. ‘How’s the head?’
‘OK, boss. Just glancing blow, innit. Had worse on rugby pitch. Fuckin’ Taliban
chippy
cunts. Can’t even shoot straight.’ Tom hugged him even closer and then remembered himself and awkwardly pulled away from the embrace. He couldn’t believe he was doing this; he would never have acted this way with the men even a month beforehand. He tried to correct himself. ‘Anyway, Sergeant Trueman, we’d better get these wagons squared away again.’ Trueman and the rest of them laughed at his self-consciousness; it was a running joke by now how he tried in vain to be formal with them.
‘Yes, sir. Fellas, start getting these fucking wagons cleaned up. I want a full clean-up, full ammo resupply. And Dusty, get Yam-Yam’s blood out of your wagon, will you. It’s minging in there. And boss,’ he said to Tom, ‘I think the padre has something for you.’
The padre sat inside the wagon, his clothes drenched in
Acton’s blood, his eyes smiling behind his glasses. One of the lenses was shattered. He held out his hip flask and said softly, ‘Thomas, if anyone does, you deserve a drink.’ Tom took it and drank gratefully.
They cleaned up the wagons all thinking about Acton. The adrenaline of the contact and the race to the HLS wore off quickly, and they filed dismally into the scoff tent. They sat apart from the others, and no one spoke during supper. They went to the troop tent, Tom, the padre and Trueman with them, and waited anxiously for news. A few of the boys flicked through magazines; some just sat staring ahead at the dirty white walls of the tent. Dusty hummed to himself, foot tapping on the ground, and Davenport twirled a pen around his fingers, clicking his teeth. Even Trueman was subdued. Tom found he had no words that could ease the wait. Outside they could hear the patter of footsteps as soldiers moved around camp, but nobody came to the tent. And then, at nine, some footsteps did come closer, and they collectively breathed in as the flaps of the tent opened and Frenchie and the doc came in.
They could tell immediately that it was good news. The doc wore a broad grin and shook Tom’s hand. He didn’t know what to say and in a daze listened open-mouthed as the doc addressed them. ‘Well, 3 Troop, you did it. Acton’s going to make it. He’s going to be OK.’ Tom could see the tension lift from the boys’ shoulders as he went on: ‘That was a very, very close-run thing. The MERT went pell-mell back to Bastion, and they stabilized the bleed during the flight. And then he went straight into theatre at the other end. They found the shrapnel. Lodged in one of his ribs. Really badly cut up his lungs. He was bleeding badly internally, very badly. That’s why he was arresting.’
Dusty interrupted: ‘You promise me, sir, you promise us?
We’re not going to hear in an hour that he’s slipped away, are we?’
The doc smiled, understanding and patient. ‘No, Corporal Miller, no. I’ve just spoken to the senior surgeon. He operated on him himself. Acton is going to be all right, I promise you. I promise you. No brain damage, no paralysis, nothing. He won’t be playing football any time soon but he’s going to be OK. Who was it that treated him when he was hit?’
As if afraid to do so, Ellis and GV put up their hands, embarrassed.
‘Well done, you two. Really well done. Without you guys and –’ he glanced at Tom and the padre ‘– the work in the wagon on the way up, he wouldn’t have made it. That’s some work. Goes to show those lessons in the summer paid off, doesn’t it?’
The doc and Frenchie left. Three Troop looked around at one another. Still Tom didn’t know what to say. He sat down, exhausted, but the boys started cheering and hugging each other. Davenport came over to Tom and sat next to him on the camp cot. ‘Nice one, sir, nice one.’
Tom looked up, surprised. ‘Oh, thanks, Dav, thanks a lot. Well driven yourself.’
‘Nah, sir. That was all you. Happy Christmas!’
Later that night Tom, Henry, Clive, Scott and Jason sat round an upturned cardboard box in their freezing tent drinking the contraband alcohol that had been sent to them. In defiance of regulations friends and family had posted out shampoo bottles full of whisky, mouthwash bottles full of vodka, sometimes even hidden miniatures inside hollowed-out books to evade the censor at Bastion. Sam had sent some of his thermonuclear sloe gin in a bottle of Ribena, merely one weapon in the arsenal of spirits in front of them. They hadn’t been together as a group since Bastion and were thrilled to be united again. After Christmas Day they’d be split up once more, Clive to take over Tom’s Mastiff role and Tom his Scimitars to prepare for the big op in the New Year.
They were listening to Tom’s – already embellished – account of that evening’s ambush when from outside the tent came a quiet ‘Knock knock?’ They froze. If they were caught drinking they’d be in a world of trouble. Ashen-faced, they sat like dummies as the flaps of the tent opened and Brennan’s head poked in.
Clive shot up, flustered. ‘Good evening, Sergeant Major. This isn’t what it looks like.’ He looked down at the table. Covered in half-empty bottles it was exactly what it looked like. ‘I mean, we just decided to have one or two drinks. To celebrate Christmas, you know.’
Brennan didn’t reply, just watched him dig himself deeper.
‘Well, I suppose it may have been slightly more than one or two. Maybe three. Possibly four. But we’re not drunk.’
Brennan flashed his gold teeth. ‘Sir, stop flapping like a nun in a brothel. We thought we’d invite ourselves over with some good tidings of our own. Room for a few wee ones?’ He came into the tent followed by the other sergeants, laden with bottles themselves.
Trueman was last. ‘Oi oi, here are the jolly boys! Evening, sirs.’ He picked up a bottle of gin from the table and eyed it contemptuously. ‘Fucking hell, sirs, you lot don’t half play it lame. It’s like an episode of
Loose Women
. Next thing you’ll be smoking Silk Cut. Well, here’s the good stuff.’ He plonked a litre of absinthe down on the table. ‘Merry Christmas one and all.’ They didn’t stop drinking until four in the morning, and then retreated to their camp beds to wake up three hours later feeling very sorry for themselves.
The CO had designated Christmas a low ops day. In every base patrols stayed in camp and the boys across the AO tried to foster some sort of festive cheer. In Newcastle they had a carol service at midday. The padre gave another sermon, but this time Tom didn’t listen, concentrating on trying not to vomit from his hangover. He looked across during the singing and saw Trueman looking green as well. The rest of 3 Troop were struggling too. That morning when he and Trueman had gone to wake them up and say Happy Christmas he thought he had smelt alcohol in their tent. Even Frenchie looked the worse for wear; he must have been boozing with the CO.
Only Brennan seemed unaffected. Amazing, Tom thought, given that he had seen him sink half a bottle of vodka in one go at three in the morning. He looked as sober as a maiden aunt. Pretty much the entire battle group had clearly got drunker than skunks the previous night but were now trying to maintain the fiction in front of each other that they were models of temperance.
The padre wound up his sermon, and afterwards Frenchie got the squadron together and had a photo taken of them all wearing their Father Christmas hats. At Christmas lunch the officers served the boys, as was the regimental tradition. When he and the officers sat down Tom inhaled his turkey and potatoes, welcoming anything to soak up the absinthe still swishing round his guts.
At 1400 the news came that
Op Minimize
had been lifted. There had been a KIA down south late on Christmas Eve, and the dead man’s family had now been informed, meaning that people were finally now allowed to phone home. Brennan produced a rota prioritizing the phones: first the fathers, then the marrieds and finally the singles. Tom thought only in passing about how the glee with which the boys ran to the phones would contrast with the scene back in Britain at the home of the KIA that day. He flicked it from his mind.
There was a bank of five phones each in a little wooden booth with a hessian cloth for token privacy. Brennan monitored call lengths. There was every chance that Minimize could be called again any minute with news from elsewhere in theatre so he religiously limited each one to five minutes. He stood outside the booth and when the soldier went in started a stopwatch he had taped above it. When it hit four minutes he would put his head in and say sympathetically, ‘Sorry, lad, one minute left,’ and allow the boy to wind up the conversation before another was allowed in.
Tom took his place with the other troop leaders at the back of the queue, happy to kick his heels and to chew the fat with the other boys. Finally Tom’s turn came. He settled into the booth on the grimy white plastic chair, took a few deep breaths and called home. He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Half eleven back home. Would Mum be back from church? The phone rang and rang and then hit the
answer machine. His heart sank. He hung up and tried again. On the eighth ring came her voice: ‘Hello, Chamberlain?’ His throat went dry. He couldn’t speak.
‘Hello? Hello?’
Come on!
He croaked, ‘Hi, Mum. Happy Christmas.’
It took a while for her voice to reach him over the line.
‘Tom! Tom! How are you! Are you OK? Where are you?’
‘I’m fine, Mum, I’m fine. We’re all allowed to ring home today. I know I promised not to, but I just decided on the off-chance. I’m fine; don’t worry. I promise you. We’re all fine.’ He thought about Acton and decided not to mention him.
‘Tom, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve literally just this minute got back from church. I was going to stay and go to drinks with the vicar afterwards, but I decided to come home and feed Zeppo early for some reason. How funny! What are you doing today? Are you going on patrol?’
‘No, Mum; we’re in camp today. It’s been great. We had a carol service and Christmas lunch and everything, and the rest of the day is pretty chilled – nothing planned. And then it’s New Year, then three more weeks, and then that’s me on R & R. I can’t wait! How’s Zeppo? What’s the weather like?’
‘He’s well, but he’s getting fat; I spoil him. You’re going to need to take him on some long walks when you’re home.’
‘Ha! Poor Zep. Give him some extra turkey today.’
‘Hmm, OK. The weather’s so-so – cold and crisp and frosty – but the drive is so slippy. I’ve managed to get a man from the council to come and grit it. How is it with you?’
‘Freezing! The nights are about minus ten at the moment. But we’re OK. We’re all OK, Mum. Can’t wait to come home though. And thank you so much for all the parcels.’ He looked at his watch; not long to go. ‘Tell Sam that we had his sloe gin. It was pretty toxic!’
‘Will do. It is so good to hear you. Everyone in the village has been watching the news about Afghanistan. Everywhere I go I’m like a celebrity.’
‘More free drinks for me the next time I’m back then. Mum, I’d better go in a bit. We’re only allowed five minutes.’
Brennan put his head around the hessian and whispered, ‘Sorry, sir; one minute left.’
Tom nodded, and continued to Constance: ‘Ma, we’re about to go into the desert for a bit so I won’t be able to ring for a while. Please still write though. And I will too. Have you been getting my blueys?’
‘They’re stuck up on the noticeboard in the kitchen. I’m looking at them right this second. Please keep sending them. It is so good to hear your news. And remember I want photos!’
‘I know, Mum, I know.’
‘Well you’d better go. I am so pleased you called. This has made my Christmas. I’m off to lunch with Sam and Florence. They’ll be delighted you rang.’
‘Say hi to them from me.’ He felt the time slipping away and desperately wanted to stop it and to continue this fragile link for ever. But he had to go.
‘Ma, Happy Christmas. And I’ll see you in a month anyway. I can’t wait! Not long.’
‘I know, Tom. Take care, darling, will you?’
‘Always do, Mum, always do.’ He had to end this. ‘I’ll write, I promise. Great to speak. Bye, Mum.’
‘Bye, Tom.’
They rallied farewells at the end.
‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’
And then the phone went dead. Tom hung up and walked away from the booth past the remnants of the queue and back to his tent, trying to look brave. He passed Dusty, who paused to speak to him but then noticed Tom’s face and let him go on his way.
He went into the tent, empty bottles still on the table stinking sweetly. He lay on his camp cot and tried to take everything in, not sure whether his numbness came from either the night before or from the phone call. A helicopter’s downdraught beat against the roof of the tent; absent-mindedly he recognized the sound of a Sea King. Maybe it carried some mail. Music came softly from Clive’s speakers, and he started to lose himself in its calming, cathartic beat. He realized then that he was very tired, and turned over the events of the night before. It seemed so long ago. Because Acton was fine, or at least would live, everyone had slightly forgotten about him. If he had died, and Tom knew just how close that had been, the whole day would have been spent writing reports of the action for the coroner, being interviewed by the CO, being grilled by Frenchie and having his every move pored over, every detail of the ambush brought up from the thrilling fog of memory into the stark white light of an inquest.
He knew there had been many, many things wrong with how he had conducted the action. Why had he been so blasé about the ICOM threat? He had forgotten about it the moment they left Eiger. Why hadn’t he made the barma team get back into Jessie’s wagon more quickly? Why had he even bothered to barma that VP in the first place? They’d been over the ground five hours before, and in that hard earth it was impossible to dig in an IED. But most of all he wondered why on earth he had run forward to Jessie’s wagon and then back with GV through the tracer gauntlet when he
could just have told Davenport to drive forward and put his bumper at the back of Three Two. That way they could have done the casevac in the cover of his own wagon.
He was sweating. It was so simple. Why hadn’t he driven up to the wagon? And why had none of the lads asked him about this? Surely it was blindingly obvious that that would have been the safest thing to do.
Tom leaned over the side of his camp cot to his Osprey folded neatly beneath. He unzipped it, reached behind the front plate to the envelope he kept there and opened the letter from his father. He cast his mind back, far away, to the little boy in the den at home reading it for the first time. He didn’t need to look at the words; he knew them by heart. He ran through them all in his head, lips mouthing every one, until they reached ‘Nothing in excess,’ where they stopped moving and felt dry. He knew deep down then, in that instant, that he had run across the gap not because he wasn’t thinking clearly but because he was, because he wanted the thrill, and when it had come, he had loved it.
The run back through the bullets with one in front of him passing between GV’s legs? That was why he had joined the army. His heart started racing, his pupils dilated, all these thoughts whirling through his skull in seconds. He had to get out there again. He couldn’t wait for it.
What was he becoming? Or had he always been this, and the weeks out here were just stripping away the layers draped over him and drawing them back to reveal the raw violence inside him?
Clive walked in, and Tom shook himself out of his dream. ‘There you are! Looking for you everywhere. Look what I’ve got!’ He dangled a piece of paper over Tom’s eyes, which struggled to focus in the dull afternoon gloom. An
e-bluey
.
Tom snatched out at it, but Clive whipped it away at the
last second. ‘Not so fast. Who’s this from?’ He looked at it theatrically. He’d already read the sender’s details on the outside. ‘Cassandra Foskett!? Oh I see! The Doris.’
‘Give it here.’
‘How much?’
‘Nothing. Give it here.’
‘How about I read it out aloud? Like a bedtime story. With the whole squadron listening.’
‘Give it here. Or else.’
‘Or else what?’
‘Or I’ll shoot you in the face.’ Tom reached beneath his bed and suddenly found his pistol in his hand. He just stayed his arm from pointing it at his friend; instead it hung limply from his wrist, but his eyes blazed.
‘Jeez, OK, OK. Whoa, boy. Just joshing.’ Clive threw the letter onto the cot and trying to mask his shock left the tent quietly. Tom didn’t notice and ripped open the envelope.
Christmas Eve
Half two in the afternoon. After one too many lunchtime gin and tonics. Hic!
Tom paused. She would have written this just as they were driving Acton back to the MERT. He carried on.
Dearest dearest Tommikins,
Only joking! I knew that would annoy you. Big rough tough soldier little Tommikins! How are you, my Afghan warrior? I cannot
begin to imagine what it must be like to have Christmas out there;
I bet you it is a world away from here. We are in London, and it has been snowing and magical and it is like a ghost town and just
like those stories we used to read as children. Frosty windowpanes,
breath steaming like clouds as you walk and snowmen all over Battersea Park. Oh Tom, it is so, so lovely here and yippee I have a week off work and I’m going skiing on Boxing Day with Jasper Smith and Charlie De Groot – remember them from Cambridge – out to stay with, yes you’ve guessed it, Jonty Forbes in his chalet in Wengen.
Tom had to stop.
She what?
While he was out here, she was running off with two of those tossers from Cambridge? He vaguely remembered the Jasper one as a tall sneering embodiment of everything he had resented about his time there. As for Charlie Grotbag, who knew what rock he had crawled out from under? And they were staying with that utter wanker Jonty. He lapsed into dreaming about the Taliban opening up a second front in Wengen and laying IEDs on its slopes. He’d defect and join them.