Rain (4 page)

Almost a year later, in April, Tom and Clive walked into the officers’ mess of their regiment, the King’s Dragoons, based in the outskirts of Aldershot. Filthy, with matted hair and sallow cheeks, they had just finished a three-week exercise on Salisbury Plain. After Sandhurst they had been thrown straight into the exercise with a squadron preparing for a tour of Afghanistan in September. The learning curve had seemed almost beyond the vertical, and they had never felt so tested. Clive went up to have a shower, and Tom went into the anteroom, took a can of lemonade from the fridge and sprawled over a sofa. He put his head back and dozed.

The pair of them had arrived late to the exercise, fresh from their troop leaders’ course, and had hung around an empty Westdown Camp on the edge of Salisbury Plain for a whole afternoon, kicking their heels and wondering if anyone in the regiment knew they were even there. They sat down on a grassy bank next to their bergens and spent the afternoon chatting, reading or just in companionable silence, enjoying the springtime sun. They were pretty much joined at the hip now, each eternally amused by the other’s character and linked by the invisible umbilical that Sandhurst had created between them. Where Tom was shy, terrified of being embarrassed and with a quick dry wit, Clive was brash, bumptious and happy-go-lucky. They knew each other now better than they could ever have wished to know anyone, and loved winding each other up and poking at each other’s flaws, while turning swiftly protective of the other and rounding
on a critic or a threat. The afternoon passed in lazy if faintly nervous anticipation of what they would face when they met their soldiers for the first time.

A rickety Land Rover pulled up next to them in the early evening and a bored voice asked them, ‘All right, sirs? If you’re the new officers I’ve got to drive you to C Squadron. Jump in.’

Twenty minutes later their sullen driver, one Trooper Livesey, pulled to a halt and pointed up a low hill towards a dark wood. ‘There you go, sirs,’ he said disdainfully. ‘C Squadron. Middle of the wood.’ They got out, and he drove off, leaving them bewildered and struggling to see in the drizzly gloom.

Labouring with their bergens, tramping through brambles and making a din of snapped branches and stumbling, eventually they were challenged by a sentry and led into the squadron
harbour
. They were immediately impressed. A squadron’s worth of
Scimitar
reconnaissance vehicles had been skilfully camouflaged, and the only noises were the quiet snores of those asleep in tents put up at the sides of the wagons and the drivers’ muffled and deliberate tinkering with the tracks and running gear of their wagons. Tom couldn’t make out anyone in detail, but his eyes, now attuned to the dark, could register blurred shadows moving softly around, breaking no twigs or branches – unlike his and Clive’s clumsy steps.

The sentry led them to the middle of the harbour and pointed to the dark bulk of a tent attached to a
Sultan
command vehicle. ‘There you go, sirs. I don’t know if they’re expecting you,’ he whispered.

Pulling back the flaps of the tent, dingy with the rain and years-old damp, they found inside an organized chaos of map boards, radios sending out clipped instructions mingled with bursts of static, mugs of steaming coffee, one man
sleeping on the floor and three others huddled around the board, the steam from the mugs condensing against the glass of their red-filtered head torches. They looked up at the newcomers with irritation.

‘Well well, look what the cat dragged in. You must be Clive and Tom.’

The tallest of the three, swept-back hair and looking immaculate, even elegant, in the less than chic surroundings, grinned and thrust out his hand. ‘Chris Du Boulay, squadron leader. Just call me Frenchie. The commanding officer said you’d be coming over. Afraid we haven’t got much of a welcome for you. You’re in the lions’ den here – all the head honchos. This is the
2ic
, Jason Gates.’

A burly figure verging on the overweight crouched over the map board threw them a glance with tired eyes and grunted before turning back to plot symbols on the map.

‘Don’t worry about him. He’s got a raging chest infection. He wouldn’t stand up if you were Kelly Brook and Carmen Electra. And this –’ Frenchie indicated the other man ‘– is Sergeant Major Brennan.’ Completely bald and very short, three gold teeth glinted at the back of Brennan’s mouth.

He growled rather than said, ‘All right, sirs. Welcome to the squadron.’ He looked them up and down before turning back to the map with a shrug, which Tom wasn’t sure was a sign of acceptance or rejection.

Frenchie continued, seemingly finding the others’ visible lack of interest rather amusing: ‘Sorry, guys. If you were expecting a big welcome speech and pep talk, or ritual debagging or whatever, you’re not going to get it. My plan for you two is simple – in at the deep end. Just as long as you don’t kill anyone on this exercise, I’m happy for you to make your own mistakes, and I, Jason, the
SSM
and your
threebars
will sort you out. It’s the only way you’ll learn. Tom, you’ve got
3 Troop, with Sergeant Trueman. Don’t piss him off. Clive – 4 Troop, Sergeant Leighton. He’s new as well as you, just picked up from
full screw
, so you can both fumble around together. Expect me to bite your heads off at regular intervals over the next few days, but don’t worry, it won’t be personal. At least,’ he paused, ‘not yet. Right, you might as well go and meet your troops, and the other troop leaders as well. Two Troop is Scott Lanyon and One’s Henry Bell. Learn from them. If you don’t, I’ll sack you, and no tour in September. There’s plenty of others who can fill your spaces. So, no pressure then, eh? As for what I expect from you, just be damn good at your jobs. I don’t really give a monkey’s whether you’re funny, kind, clever, played rugby for England, wear a dress and call yourself Susan at the weekend or what name you call the loo, just be hot stuff at soldiering. Capiche?’

They nodded simultaneously, eyes on stalks.

‘Right, see you back here in two hours for orders.’ They turned to leave before Frenchie bade them look back in. ‘And fellas, cheer up! It ain’t that bad!’ They smiled wanly and headed out into the pitch-black forest to find their troops.

That was their introduction to the tribe, as Frenchie called C Squadron. Tight-knit, rife with impenetrable slang and in-jokes, its soldiers took themselves not very seriously at all and their jobs very seriously indeed. They looked down with disdain not just on the rest of the army, but the rest of the regiment as well.

The sense of loyalty to the squadron was tangible, and some of the boys had a C tattooed in Gothic script on a shoulder blade. It wasn’t unknown for soldiers in C to turn down promotion if it meant having to leave to join A or B Squadrons. Nothing gave them more pleasure than putting one over A or B. And they all loved soldiering. The better
you were at soldiering, the slicker your skills and drills, the higher you were in the social hierarchy of the squadron. Experience filtered down all the way from Brennan, a veteran of the first Gulf War. He and the
SQMS
, Staff Sergeant Grant, had been in the same squadron together as troopers in that war. Beneath them were the sergeants, all with their eyes on Brennan’s job, and all competing to control the mood of the boys.

But if anyone was the C Squadron archetype, whose mood was both the bellwether and the creator of the squadron’s state of morale, it was Martin ‘Freddie’ Trueman, Tom’s sergeant. Middle-height with a friendly round face and a squashed nose, mousey brown curly hair, and thirty years old to Tom’s twenty-four, he was the beating heart of the squadron. He knew it, Frenchie knew it, Brennan knew it and all the boys knew it. Nothing on tour ever happened without his involvement.

Ever since Bosnia, right out of depot and from a broken childhood of serial truancy before that, wherever he went, action followed in the remarkable way that it tends to with certain soldiers. But unlike those soldiers who are catalysts for action and sometimes get those around them hurt, Trueman was lucky. When things happened to him and around him everyone else seemed to get out OK as well, and he was worshipped for it. He had his faults: he was inclined to be a barrack-room lawyer; his innate grasp of the immediate tactical battle sometimes obscured an appreciation of the wider picture beyond that firefight; he could be a hothead who let his emotions get the better of him and whose moral compass was as sensitive as his fists were willing to right any perceived wrong. But Frenchie, who had had him as his driver when he was a troop leader in Bosnia, seemed to adore him.

Luckily, Tom and Trueman got off to a good start after
Tom’s first set of orders, where Trueman was impressed by Tom’s robust, no-task-too-hard attitude.

Frenchie himself, a rising star among his peers and whose easy manner hid a razor-sharp ambition, skilfully harnessed the boys’ exuberance to produce an excellent performance on the exercise. Tom and Clive had, after predictable frictions at the start, come through their test with flying colours and had each gained if not yet unconditional love from their soldiers then certainly a benign acceptance.

At the end of the exercise the squadron was washing down the vehicles on the dustbowl in Westdown, desperate to go home for the weekend, when Frenchie shouted over to Tom and Clive: ‘Right, you two. Laurel and Hardy. Over here.’

They detached themselves, sensing trouble, and as they approached Frenchie noticed their nervousness. Somehow managing to look as well turned out as if he had been in an office for three weeks and not among the drizzle, dust, mud and no showers of Salisbury Plain, he relaxed them immediately.

‘Don’t worry, maniacs. Not a bollocking. I just want to say well done. Top effort for the last few weeks. And look, you’ve made mistakes which you’re never going to make again. Result, eh? You might have thought that when you pitched up in the tent at the start of the exercise that we were treating you callously. Well, we were. Tough love. View it as if we were a family of gannets on some massive cliff. The only way you’re going to learn to fly is by me kicking you out of the nest. If you’re good, you’ll figure out how to fly before you hit the bottom. If not, splat! Anyway, you two gannets managed to fly. Congratulations.’

And so as Tom lay on a mess sofa later that evening, looking forward to a long bath before supper, all seemed fine when Jason came in. ‘Ah, one of the two amigos. Well done,
fella – good effort on the plain. I’d better go see the wife and try to rescue our shambles of a marriage. I tell you, never get married in this job. More trouble than it’s worth. See you tomorrow. These were in your pigeonhole by the way, Tom. Blueys from Afghan.’

Tom sat up straight and caught the two letters that Jason threw at him. ‘Thanks,’ he said absently as he saw that they were from Will Currer.

Tom went up to his room with the letters, like a small boy carrying unopened presents. He sat on his bed and opened the first one, wondering how his friend was. Tom had seen him, but only for a brief drink, a couple of weekends before Will was due to go out, back in February.

Ridiculously hot evening

The
Bastion
Naafi

28th March

Mate,

Here we go! The last few days have been mental. I arrived at Bastion yesterday, and have been hanging round doing
RSOI
, which is a barrel of laughs; ranges,
IED
lessons and med lessons teaching us all how to treat someone who has just had their head blown off. You know how I told you I was going to be a spare
bod
at
Battle Group
HQ, stagging on the radios, making the brews, etc? Well all that has, surprise surprise, been thrown out of the window. One of the platoon commanders, Jimmy Dalton, fell off the back of a
Chinook
last week and smashed in his knee, and is being lifted back to the UK tomorrow. I’m taking over his platoon. Oh lucky me. I went to see him in the hospital (which, by the way, is grim. Lads in
clip
all over the place.) So I went to banter Jimmy and pick his brains. The platoon’s tour has been pretty quiet, but there was a
Cat B
the day before he got injured. He was gutted to be out of action, but he was
really reassuring about the platoon. Apparently they’re awesome, and the sergeant, Adams, is a legend. I think my drama will be that he’ll just treat me as I am – i.e. a total
crow
. Quite how I’m going to win him over is a mystery to me. Help!

I can’t believe it’s happening like this, ridiculously quickly. You suddenly realize here what we’ve let ourselves in for. The dust, the heat and the noise of the helicopters coming in bringing in casualties are a million miles from Sandhurst. Big boys’ rules, and, not going to lie, I’m not quite sure I’m big enough for this game. Obviously don’t tell any chicks that! Better go now to the
scoff
tent (scoff’s all right out here by the way) before a lesson tonight about more med stuff, this time probably about how to stuff your own intestines back into your stomach cavity. Take care, mate; send me lots of blueys and parcels, and sneak over some grog, please! I reckon I’m going to need that. Having said that, knowing how slow the post is you’ll probably get this only after you’ve visited me in
Selly Oak
after I’ve been minced.

Gotta go; no rest for the wicked, unlike you war dodgers back home …

Knew that would wind you up!

Will

Tom smiled as he thought of Will and wished that he could be out with him. He picked up the second
bluey
, written in pencil this time in spindlier handwriting and grimy with dust. He fingered it open, taking care not to allow the hastily licked brittle gum to tear too much of the body of the letter.

Mazeer

28th April

Dear Tom,

Wish I could put a brave face on this, but I’ve landed in the middle of a nightmare. Please can you not say too much of the following to
anyone. You are the only person I can write to with any degree of honesty. I certainly can’t write anything approaching the truth to Mum and Dad or any civi mates, especially girls. You should see my letters to them! They are masterclasses of euphemism. I say things like ‘things have got a bit tasty out here’ when you know that means ‘things are beltingly horrific out here’; ‘the boys’ morale is sky high’ meaning ‘well at least they’re not slitting their wrists yet’; ‘the Afghan Army are quite an amusing bunch’, for which read, ‘They are utter fucking retards, and quite how we’re going to be able to trust this bunch of muppets when we eventually leave them to their own devices is beyond me.’ I just need someone, anyone, to unload upon; I hope you understand.

We (3 Platoon) are based in
PB
Mazeer, a compound about the size of two tennis courts about 200m from the
FLET
. We are in contact every day; whenever we get out the gate, there are IEDs all over the shop. Sergeant Adams was killed on my fourth day out here – IED. He just evaporated in front of me. Don’t want to talk about it any more than that. Since him we’ve lost a single amputee, Mercer (left leg), and one of the Fijians, Tirinaqakalaika (T for short), got shot in the foot. T thought the whole thing was hilarious, and couldn’t stop laughing throughout his
casevac
. A doc told me that it would have been the adrenaline that made him do that. I’m not so sure; he was pretty wired to the moon in the first place.

Every step you take is horrendous, and your heart leaps the moment you put your foot down and don’t find yourself ripped to shreds. The boys have got some banter – ‘Try the Mazeer diet; tread on an IED and lose half your body weight in half a second.’ It’s just a hornets’ nest. When we go out the gate now we’re fired upon before we’ve even reached 200m. No civilians want to talk to us; our relations with the community are non-existent. We must look like aliens to them.

Mazeer itself is a womb, the only place where reason and order exist. Outside is just shit Afghan, some dumb failed state whose only
concessions to modernity are the motorbike and the machine gun. I’ll leave it for you to find out for yourself when you get here what ‘manlove Thursday’ means. In for a treat there, pal.

I feel sick every moment thinking about going out again. When you get back in after being out you get this amazing elation for about half an hour, but then the sickness starts to build again, and by the time of the next patrol you want to vom your guts out. Corporal Thomas (my acting sergeant since Adams died) and I have to go down the line of the boys as they’re checking kit before we go out. Some of them are crying, not bawling just weeping gently but still steadfast; others are just pumped to the max, bouncing their heads up and down like they’re listening to trance music, just amped about getting rounds down. Those are the ones I’m most worried about; how they’re going to cope with being back home is beyond me. They just LOVE the violence. Others are being sick from fear or dry-retching. The other day Thommo and I had to drag one boy, Croxley, out the gate and kick him down the road for 10 metres as he sobbed and wailed just to get him going. But when the contact started, he was in the zone; amazing, loving it, drills immaculate, calm as you like. It was extraordinary. And they’re so young as well. For some of them this is their first time abroad. I’ve promised them that abroad’s not usually this bad.

We have four months left out here. I get
R & R
with only four weeks to go before the end of tour. Please can I see you for a drink when I’m back? The thing is I just can’t see how it’s going to happen without me getting hit. I don’t want to sound like O’Neill in
Platoon
(!) but I just have a really bad feeling about this whole thing.

I caught my reflection yesterday in some broken glass in a window frame. Three weeks ago I couldn’t have looked more crow. Now I’m allyer than Andy McNab.
Op Bronze
is well underway, my kit is as dusty as you like, even my pipe-cleaner arms are turning into guns of steel because of the pull-up competition we have every night, and I’ve got a bit of a beard coming on because there’s no water to shave with.
I put my foot down a bit though and have a rule that we shave every five days and always when someone comes to visit, i.e. the brigade commander, who’s coming tomorrow. Apparently he’s a stickler. Get the razors out, lads!

I don’t know how this is all going to appear when I look back on it. Can you keep this letter so at least I have some kind of document to remind me. I’ll try to write again soon mate, better go and radio the
OC
and give him the 1600 sitrep. Looking forward to a pint or thirty, mucker,

Will

PS. Make that forty.