04th Jan 2012
Wednesday // 1pm // 1 month ago
Memoirs of a solider, Silenced. [FINISHED]
Memoirs of a soldier, silenced.
It’s hard to find normality here. You start to miss the most bizarre things; walking your dog, going to the shop for a bloody loaf of bread, driving your piece-of-junk car, heading for a big old fry up with the lads, arguing with your deranged delinquent of a brother, your wife. I used to be just like you, sitting at home; watching the odd bit of news, Iraq popped up every now and then, never really paid much attention, never really cared. I needed a job. The TV made being a soldier look half decent; who doesn’t want to be their hometown hero? I applied. Piss easy, I thought. Wrong. Strangely, they don’t warn you about the sleepless nights, or the fear that grips you when you’re infantry battalion commander walks through the doors with another set of dog tags, they don’t even give you a heads-up about the endless bombardment of bullets, grenades, snipers, mortars, 24/7, twenty four hours a day, ten thousand minutes a week, never-ending. I can’t fathom the words to evoke an adequate enough depiction of this hell-hole, it’s the single most depressing place I ever had the displeasure of being acquainted with in my twenty seven years of being. But here’s my ‘story’, the little bits the newsreaders forget to mention, the niggling thoughts I couldn’t put in my letters home. Please do me a favour before you begin to read, go to the shop, drive your car, go for a meal with your friends, go for another, hug your wife, hug her again, now your brother, and breathe in, breathe. You’re alive. You. Are. Alive.
Firstly, don’t bother reading this with a heavy heart. I didn’t just wake up one morning, to the clamour of bullets, bombs and twenty skin-head, camouflaged men, who have developed an inconvenient intolerance to sleeping silently. I chose this. Careless, I was. Picture this, I am nineteen; I had less than half a dozen GCSEs to my name, there were two options: the dole, or the army. It was as simple as that. January 21st 2003, 1600 hours, flight EL490. It begins. The heat hits you first, you clam up, your throat is etched with dehydration, suffocation. This isn’t Belfast. You arrive at camp. Shit, this is actually happening. You pinch yourself; you’d gauge your eyes out if you could. There’s a reason the news never bother with this, too disturbing. You start to understand, those men in their hunter green tanks, fleeting images on a TV screen. Well, they actually exist, you can’t switch them off anymore, and they’re glaring you in the face. You’re one of them now. This, this dire shit hole, is your home. How long for is anyone’s guess, you’ll arrive home though, that’s a cert, it’s just in what condition that is yet to be determined. They don’t care. You try to be okay, hopeful even. It doesn’t work. You write home every now and again, you try to ignore it when your heart starts to throb at the idea of home. Anyway, there’s not much you can say, they have your mouth stapled shut with their fickle bribes, and everything else is just pathetically depressing. You wonder how long it will be until you can feel safe. You never do. There’s always a lingering feeling of panic, of uncertainty. Ol’ Mickey used to explode with laughter when any of our lads showed even a hint of apprehension; “grow a set, ye pussy”, he’d say. The first death is tough, the second almost worst. It could be you. You know that, but you become detachable. Removed from the stories you hear, the people you meet, life. It’s just a job. You don’t trust anyone; children, mothers, wives. Everyone here has their secret to tell, spies in their own rights.
You’re all there to fight. Fight for your mates, your regiment, your platoon, yourself. We all find a reason. Me? I fought to stay alive. I didn’t much fancy the idea of death. It was inconvenient. It happens. Your friends, your enemies, a wreck-less lottery. Luke was first. An EOD technician, digging out an IED snuggled right in the middle of the road, just waiting to burst in his face. It was Harry’s turn next; we used to have a right bloody laugh, till they prised him from our hands too. Insurgents; they couldn’t give a shit. You become a number, a figure on the news, a story. Mum used to write, telling me she saw my troupe, Channel 4, ITV, BBC, the whole lot. I was famous. I never got used to the cameras, the crews. Little hints of home. It still exists; you just can’t see it, not yet. They used to send ‘celebrities’ out to us, most of them managed a quick hello, before diverting back to their re-assuring luxuries. I don’t blame them. Some stuck around; built a repertoire with the lads, got their hands dirty, shot a few canons, marched in our boots for a while. You appreciate that. A memento of your humanity, a keep-sake.
‘Your R and R will commence on the 20th December.’ I was going home for Christmas. Escape, if just for a little while. I never had much time for the festive season, but I’d take what I could get. I didn’t tell my mother, always the mischievous one. I was getting good at keeping my mouth shut. My hands, drenched in numbness, unable to adjust to the Baltic Irish breeze, I pressed lightly on the doorbell of Mill view Cottage. Home sweet home, isn’t that what they say? Just like that, I was enfolded in the musky rose-tinted scent of her arms again, tears prickled both our eyes. You earn your right to tears, when you’re in the army, your manhood is justified. My wife was perched on the sofa, set to pounce, as I danced through the door, with my mother, collapsed in emotional turmoil. Oh God, I missed her. You’re seconds away from bursting with all this clash of emotion and hype, you don’t know whether to cry, scream or smile, so you manage a combination of all three. You’re world is aligned, correct, together. If just for a little while. Everywhere you go, you spot familiar faces, a pat on the back accompanied by each ‘Hello.’ Here you are, a source of pride for your little Irish hometown. You want to bottle this, package it neatly away, out of reach, only to take it out when you’re dark days envelop you once more. You are no longer a robot, a target. You are a living, breathing, air-hogging, laugh spurting human being. Breathe.
The déjà-vu that wallops you, as you thud your way back to camp, is astoundingly disheartening, and all the while inviting, as you return to the memorable confinements of comradeship and duty. The hustle of Christmas still lingering, as the slapdash of decorations clutter the canteen, and each soldier’s bedside is doused with a compilation of Santa, robin red-breasts, and nativities, strewn upon cards, from loved ones afar. There’s not much time to feel jovial round here. It’s back to taxing drills, reputable marches and mandatory gun-fire. I was there five months, and three days, before it happened. A letter, musty yellow, with my wife’s spiralling hand-writing imprinted on the front. It began like they all did, like they always do, she missed me. Who wouldn’t? But, this time, there was desperation, a plea of reasoning, a cry for my return. As always, her pride was evident, her concerns for my whereabouts apparent. I scurried through the letter, time limited. Five months. Five months pregnant. ‘Father’, I would have to add to my job description. My duty. So, I did what anyone would do, I ran.
I darted, in the middle of the night, bundled myself unto a lorry. Escape. I was no longer confined, to a war-bound world of glorified immoralities, and gut-wrenching heartbreak. Yet, I am now silenced, bound by my choice to love, rather than destruct. Absent without leave. That’s what they’ll say. Deserted us. You tell me, what would you do? Your little marvel, your child, is born. And, where are you? Stuck in Afghanistan, fighting for a cause you never so much as understood. I fought in service, for nine years, and you tell me I haven’t earned the right to see my baby? Well, that’s when I’ll fight back, harder than I ever fought for any corroding government’s crumbling regimes. I thought about staying, giving into their dooming threats of exile. I may be a comrade, a sergeant, but I wouldn’t ever be a man, if I stood there, and merely watched them pry my precious son, my reason for being, out of my grasp. As I scuttled through the dusty cardboard boxes peering down on me like predators, the lorry jolted forward, unsure of its next movement. Afraid, we all were. I dosed off, unaware of how long for, but when I awoke, the lorry was still. Silence. I waited, just a few moments, before hurrying to exit, my time was limited. I never held any sort of religious beliefs, until now. I began reciting any prayer I could remember them teaching us at St. Dominic’s. My journey home took just under thirteen days, etching out before me, a tedious and gruesome journey. I won, for now. I left Afghanistan, three years ago today, but it’s not over. The pang of guilt, a constant feature screwed into your anatomical build, from the day you set foot in the battle ground. I am a murderer. Innocent lives, destroyed. It’s still happening, there are still men, fighting. You never stop. You can’t stop. You fight, and sometimes what you fight for alters and shifts, but every man encounters a battle he must fight, regardless of stature or status. I encountered mine, not on the blood splattered warzone in Afghanistan, but in my uncomfortable springy metal bed, in Camp Bastion, as I lay and read the news of my expectant wife. I had a choice, but in my heart of hearts, I knew what I had to do. We always do. I was more fearless, when I jolted out of that bed that night, than I ever was in my nine years at war. Why? It doesn’t take guts and passion, to trigger a gun. It takes passivity, and stupidity. But, to fight for the ones you love, when it is called upon you to do so, that is the highest envelopment of integrity, and courage. I am someone’s brother, son, husband and father. I am not my job, nor my past, and I never will be. So I write today, to tell you of a war lost, and a battle won. I ask of you this; do not disregard the prominence of today’s governmental bodies, for they are wise to prescribe a war, and aim their advertisements at innocent young minds, which have no way of knowing any better. All I ask is for you is to fight your own battle that which will drive you, do not fight a war which should never have begun, or was never meant to be fought. Only you will know this. I am not telling you, what is right, or what is wrong. I am terrified. I am screaming.
You can close your eyes to things you don't want to see but you can't close your heart to things you don't want to feel.
