Authors: Pen Farthing
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Green Green Grass of ‘Home’
ON THE FLIGHT
back to Afghanistan I slept during the whole journey, more or less. I opened my eyes occasionally and looked around the crowded hold of the transport plane, but it wasn’t long before I closed them again and drifted off to the constant hum of the engines as we cruised across a barren night sky. Everybody on the plane was going back; nobody was new to this any more. I knew what to expect when I arrived at my destination; there wasn’t the apprehension that is with you when you’re first deployed to a new area.
I had held Lisa for a lot longer this time as we said goodbye. Being with her when I found out that it was Richie who had been killed wasn’t good. It had brought it home to both of us just how close we were to harm’s way in Afghanistan.
When the C130 transport plane landed on the dirt strip runway in the Helmand desert outside of Camp Bastion it felt like I had never left.
I walked down the cargo ramp as the loadmaster and crew were already making preparations to get the big beast airborne again. The air felt colder than I remembered, and dampness hung in the air. Low white clouds clung to the mountains to the north.
The mud under my boots was wet and sticky. But I had brought back my winter leather boots; the canvas ones – useless when the weather wasn’t dry – were in my day sack slung over my shoulder. I wouldn’t be using them again in a hurry.
Mase and I headed over to get our rifles and gear from storage. I popped my head into the operations tent to sign us in. It hadn’t changed in the ten days I’d been away. Radios crackled into life from every desk, reports and demands coming in from across the Helmand desert. Maps and charts were stapled to every available wall space. It even felt damp in here too.
The duty officer for the day was also the unit’s training officer. I had reported to him directly on a day-to-day basis when we were back in Plymouth.
‘Ahh, Troop Sergeant – what’s up?’ he smiled as he saw me walking towards his cluttered desk area.
‘Just got back from R & R, Boss; two of us need a lift back out to Now Zad. Got any flights heading out that way?’
‘Yeah, if you’re ready to go in twenty minutes,’ he said as he checked a screen in front of him. ‘You can get a lift with the Immediate Response helo.’
I took a breath. The IRT helo was launched only when it needed to collect a casualty.
‘What happened?’
‘One of the lads has broken his pelvis, not sure how.’
‘Shit, do you know who it is?’ My mind was racing, wondering who it could be.
‘Marine Smith,’ he replied without looking up from the screen.
Marine Smith had been sent to Afghanistan to work as a clerk but we had requested him to help bolster our company in Now Zad. He had been with us only a few weeks.
My brain had also worked out that it took at least five minutes to get to the helo pad at a jog. I had already started mentally counting down the minutes.
‘We will be on that flight; can you let the pilot know, Boss?’ I asked.
‘Roger, see you in another three months. Hope you enjoyed your R & R,’ he smiled as he picked up the internal phone.
I charged out of the busy hum of the ops tent to find Mase casually leaning against a section of the HESCO barricade that surrounded the tented HQ complex.
‘No rest for the wicked, mate. We need to grab our gear and get down to the helo pad. We’re out of here in fifteen minutes.’
He just looked at me; his brain slowly registered what I had said.
‘Oh crap,’ he replied.
We just made the flight, running up the cargo ramp and into the hold, struggling with three large blue bags of letters and parcels for the Kilo Company lads.
Mase had noticed them dumped in a pile waiting to be sent to Now Zad as we had signed out our weapons. It had been a nice thought at the time but after running the kilometre to the helo pad with the heavy postal sacks and our personal gear we seriously wished that bright idea hadn’t occurred to us.
Sweat was pouring from me as the loadmaster pointed out two empty seats either side of the medical crew. I hadn’t even sat down before the Chinook powered up into the overcast sky.
I smiled at the Wren medical assistant, a member of the medical response team, in the next jump seat along. She smiled back as I dumped the mail sacks and plonked myself down.
I noticed that she already had her medical mask tied neatly to hand around her neck and was holding a pair of rubber gloves and bandages in one hand. She had a fully stuffed medical bag lying closed between her feet. Her rifle
had
been treated almost as an irrelevance and had been stuffed under her seat.
‘Keen for postmen, aren’t you? Maybe you can come and give me a personal delivery sometime?’ she shouted above the roar of the helo engines, a stupid big grin on her face.
I looked back at her. She caught me by surprise. Had I heard her right?
As I stumbled to think of something appropriate to say she burst into a fit of giggles. She was winding me up. Flying out on the IRT helo as the duty medical team must have been fairly stressful. Not knowing what to expect, then arriving at a destination to be presented with a casualty and expected to deal with it as the helo flew back to Bastion was not a job I envied. Humour was often the best way to deal with stressful situations, and she had just succeeded in getting me flustered good and proper.
‘Nice one,’ I shouted back as I regained my composure. ‘Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll let you bandage me up one day, okay?’
She gave me the thumbs up, the stupid big grin still on her face, and then went back to checking the medical bag on the floor in front of her.
I looked out the back of the cab. We were flying low, really low. But we had no choice as the clouds were almost down to the deck. It was raining too, not too heavy but enough of a drizzle for the pilots to have their work cut out for them.
The 20-minute flight passed quickly as my brain flitted between memories of my R & R, which already seemed so long ago, to wondering how the lads were coping with the loss of Marine Watson. I was also desperate to find out how Nowzad, RPG and Jena were. I hadn’t heard from Dave since that one message he left on my phone, so I didn’t even know if the dogs were still in the compound. I knew compared to losing one of the lads the fate of three strays
was
nothing. But they had been my three strays and I still needed to know.
The signal came back from the loadmaster – one minute to touchdown. Mase and I stood up, coping with the bucking movements of the helo by holding on to the webbing straps hanging from the ceiling of the airframe, our legs planted firmly apart, our knees slightly bent as if riding a giant surfboard. The medical crew was still seated, waiting for the casualty to be brought on board.
As the jolt confirmed that we had landed both of us were already running down the ramp dragging the three mail sacks out into the stinging miserable hurricane of wet mud and rain that the downdraught from the rotors was churning up. Even with our goggles on and scarves pulled up around our mouths we fought to see where we were going as we tried to get a safe distance from the back of the cab. Partially obscured by the storm of soggy mud I caught a glimpse of four crouched figures struggling to carry a body in a sleeping bag back up the ramp.
I assumed that was Marine Smith on his way to the hospital.
Within seconds the four figures were back on solid ground, huddled next to me and Mase 30 yards from the helo. It was just the right spot to be hit full blast with the stones and mud as the Chinook launched back into the overcast sky. I winced as I took a stone direct on my upper left arm.
As the noise and hurtling debris subsided I pulled down my mud-coated goggles. They were completely useless now. I couldn’t see anything out of them.
A fist punched me on the arm, right on the spot the rock had just hit. I winced again. ‘Welcome back, Sarge, how was the R & R?’
I recognised the voice. As he took off the goggles and scarf, his gringo moustache, even bushier than normal,
confirmed
to me that it was Dave. His dark unwashed hair seemed to have grown even longer than I had expected it would.
‘Yeah, hoofing mate, still missed this place though,’ I lied as we all stood up and shook hands. ‘How have you guys been?’
I didn’t need to ask about Richie directly; he knew what I meant.
‘Yeah, better, the lads are dealing with it okay,’ he replied. ‘It was a hard few days at first.’
I looked around the desert; the familiar 4x4 with John driving was just screeching to a halt. The mountains at either side of the town were completely enveloped in low cloud. It was now drizzling steadily.
I turned back to Dave, but he already knew what I was going to ask.
‘Don’t worry, the dogs are doing good, they are still in the compound. Jena has put on a bit of weight though.’
‘I still don’t have a plan to get them out,’ I replied as we dumped the mail sacks on the back of the flat-bed truck. Dave didn’t respond. The chill wind from the north was cooling me down quite rapidly now that the exhilaration of the helicopter ride was over.
‘Hey John, are you still driving this thing?’ I extended my hand through the open passenger window of the truck so I could shake his. It was good to see familiar faces again.
‘Don’t trust anybody else with my baby,’ he laughed, ‘You should know that!’
I jumped into the cab next to him for the short ride back to the compound with the rest of the lads riding shotgun on the back of the flat bed. I looked down at what had, only minutes ago, been my clean washed uniform. It was now wet and covered in mud. I knew that it would stay that way for several weeks to come.
As I stared out of the window I realised what had been puzzling me about the desert floor: it was the wrong colour.
Instead
of the dull cracked yellow of the last few months there was now a thin carpet of green vegetation extending as far as the eye could see.
‘Wow, when did that happen?’ I asked, pointing out the front of the cab windscreen.
‘Day after it first rained, overnight and just like that, boom, we got grass,’ John replied, not taking his eyes from the potholed track.
The compound, on the other hand, hadn’t changed one bit. Everything looked exactly as I’d left it when I’d last driven through the metal gates. Except, that was, for the water that had now been unable to run off through the thickset walls of the compound and was now pooled in vast puddles over every depression in the ground.
‘Nice, wish I had bought my wellingtons back with me,’ I said as John drove the truck through a particularly deep puddle to arrive outside the ops room.
I reported straight to the nerve centre to inform the boss I was back. The surprised look on his face told me that he hadn’t expected me back till the next scheduled resupply flight in another few days.
‘Nice haircut, Sergeant,’ he smiled as I removed my combat helmet. I had to admit I had had it cut slightly too short during R & R. I now looked like the new boy of the compound as most lads hadn’t had a haircut in over two months.
We exchanged pleasantries about my R & R before getting stuck into the situation report so I could get up to speed on the events of the last ten days.
I listened intently as he explained how Marine Watson had died. The company had been ambushed by the Taliban two days on the trot as they mounted patrols towards the north of Now Zad. On the second occasion Richie was in the passenger seat of the WMIC that I sometimes commanded. He had been shot as the cavalry were responding to the request for fire support.
The lad who had just broken his pelvis had been riding top cover in a WMIC as part of a night patrol to resupply an observation post that had been in operation for a few days out in the desert. Even wearing the night vision goggles that intensify the ambient light the driver had still failed to see the edge of a steep-sided
wadi
. Marine Smith had been lucky not to have been more seriously injured as the vehicle tyres lost their grip in the wet mud and the wagon rolled down the bank.
The boss had almost finished getting me back up to speed when the Taliban decided to welcome me back to the compound.
‘Hope you haven’t forgotten what to do,’ were his parting words as I charged out of the ops room. Checking on the dogs would have to wait.
I sprinted to take up my place in the sangar. Only 24 hours ago I had been drinking beer in a posh hotel. I was now wet through in a crammed sangar listening to gunfire reverberate around the mountain walls as the Taliban reminded me that nothing had changed.
Hutch was manning the gun to my right. I hadn’t managed to chat to him yet. He just shouted across as he engaged a target in the far distance. ‘Welcome back, Sarge.’
I looked out on to the dull rain-soaked town of Now Zad. It wasn’t funny but I had to smile. Despite the rain and the new grass it was like I had never left.
I dumped my day sack by my bed and retrieved the special dog chews I had bought back in the UK from a side pouch. I quickly called in to see if any of my lads were off duty in their compound. I found the open windows in the accommodation areas decorated with sparkly tinsel and Christmas banners that were now dripping from the continuing downpour.
There was even a small spruce tree in the corner of the room that looked as if it had seen better days. I had no idea where that had come from.
Most of my lads were around the sangars or asleep in their racks. I spoke briefly to the few who were getting on with personal admin. I deliberately avoided raising the subject of Richie. If the lads wanted to talk to me about it they would. But for now no one did. I tried to wind them all up with tales of my R & R and the amount of alcohol and good food I’d stuffed down my neck while at home.
As I headed back out to see the dogs across the compound it was hard to avoid the puddles of water forming in every dip in the ground. Arriving at the run I stared inside, but no dogs ran out to greet me. There was a new corrugated shelter that I imagined Dave or John must have built. Peering inside I saw two dogs curled up together, Jena and RPG.