CREATIVE WRITING: The Thinking Combatant.

It was a searing hot and dry day. I still hadn’t acclimatised to the overwhelming heat yet and even after four days I couldn’t believe how intensely bright the sunlight made the desert sand seem. Sunglasses and shadows were my new best friends. I felt as though the air just wasn’t dense enough and at forty-three degrees celsius the heat was easily the highest I had ever experienced. If only I was wearing shorts and a shirt instead of combats, body armour and kevlar helmet.

Camp Bastion’s air strip was a furiously loud and busy place. In the waiting area it was only too easy to tell whether the soldiers around me were coming in or going out by their facial expressions, by their kit and how they carried themselves. Some pairs of eyes stared a thousand yards away into nothingness. Their minds were further still.

My face harboured the obvious signs of an outward Chinhook flight; fresh faced, clean-shaven, pasty white skin, focused and receptive of all around. However eager and confident I felt I still had an overwhelming instinct to keep my head down and eyes front. It was as if paying a subconscious respect to those around me – who had obviously been through a tough time up until their arrival back to the relative safety of this base. 

A movements corporal appeared holding a clipboard.

‘FOB K?’ He called loudly. ‘Wheels up at 1440hrs’.

Less than half an hour to wait. I went through a plan in my head of how I was going to tackle the task of getting all of my kit on board in a single trip, there wasn’t time to make more. I’d dump my bergan in the centre of the bird once past the tailgate entrance. Then find a space to sit and place my rifle on the cargo-net seat... I stop myself from thinking about crap and reflect that I’m thinking too much about bullshit purely because I was nervous as hell. 

Nine minutes to wheels up. It is beyond my comprehension as to how much this place, even the outer edge of camp, stinks so badly of shit. I was already sick of coughing up what I’d heard christened as ‘dusty shit-breaths’. Maybe the Forward Operating Base smelt better? This was clearly not the sort of question to be asking the arriving men and women around me. 

Not long to wait now. I could hear and feel the massive twin-rotors powering up. A sense of exhilaration rushes through me as I think to myself about what lay before me. This shit gets real in less than ten minutes and I’m glad there is no doubt in my own ability, and those around me. I just have to stay switched on. Very switched on. I smirk as I remember one of my civvi mates trying to impress a local chick back home by telling her that mistakes cost his business thousands. Here, mistakes cost lives. Pride kicks in as I anticipate the challenge ahead. 

I wonder if I’m fundamentally broken at the core for feeling excited? I muse as I get up to blindly embark on what was to be the worst five months of my life.

*

I’m left shaken and momentarily confused after a thunderous explosion a short distance from the FOB. The explosion rocked the mortar-proofed roof above my shitty sleeping space with such energy that I was stunned momentarily. No sooner had I realised that this one was a controlled ammo dump destruction, I felt robbed – I was having a rare and blissful dream of being back home on the piss and dancing badly with the fiancée. I could still see the residual images in my mind and tried to cherish every single detail. It had been six weeks since the satellite phone connected to her mobile. Some fucking alarm clock that was! Thoroughly gutted and frustrated I force myself to get up and face another long, hot and shitty day. 

On an early and relatively cool Friday morning I used some time to hand wash some kit. Once the sweat stains were just about removed I gave myself a five minute break and plonked my ass on a pile of old and solid sandbags. 

An anti-boredom tool I used, in typical introverted fashion, was to observe unbeknown others around me in their daily business to speculate how their day was, what they were thinking and how they were feeling. So I sat there. Observing. Thinking.

The moment's inactivity allowed me to slip into negativity to the situation at hand. I’m now unreservedly sick of this total shit hole. Sick of randomly speeding up, slowing down, changing direction and stopping at wall edges just for the menial task of getting to the portaloo. Still, with the threat of incoming enemy bullets from the surrounding open land, nothing was going to stop me from doing so. 

Life here really is fucking grim. By now I was acclimatised and couldn’t care less about the brightness of the sun or how hot it was sure to get later that day. Prolonged exposure to the conditions, the threat, the work load, the ever-hating locals, the repetitive cookhouse food, and the sun all combine to make the experience as dreadful as can possibly be.

A short-term visiting officer, who I was unfamiliar with, emerged from a building in the middle distance ahead of me, took two steps and stopped in his tracks only a meter or so from the doorway. From across the dusty open space, I watched as his face shifted from placid to one of shock and disbelief. Suddenly, he was thrown violently backwards. Then a noise I knew only too well reached my ears. In a split second all three components from the sound of a single sniper round reached me. Whip, crack, thump. He’d been hit straight to the chest from an unknown firer and was knocked clean off his feet into the doorway, his body armour cracking under the energy release. Silence followed. Time seemed to slow to a near standstill.

I threw myself to the floor beside the sandbags. I wasn’t wearing any protective equipment, furious with myself for getting slack.

‘Contact!’ Somebody bellowed. 

‘Where the fuck d’that come from?’A voice from inside the doorway called out as he dragged the casualty deeper into the darkened, unlit room.

‘Not seen,’ I replied. ‘Stay there, check him.’

‘I got ‘im.’ The voice retorted, sounding freaked out. 

‘Anyone else hit?’

‘Nothing heard!’ I scanned the area around me, ’Nope!’

The whole base is a hive of activity as the radio net kicks in. One by one, voices report on their findings. Nothing heard or seen all round. Very soon after I hear the request for a medical emergency response heli to come and pick up the casualty over the radio. I knew that we would remain on high alert for some time now, to react to any further enemy bullshit. I clutched at my rifle and thought about crawling the fifty meters or so to my armour, but I knew there was no point. If it wasn’t a random pop-shot from enemy snipers, it was a grenade being tossed over the wall by the hand of a civilian-clothed enemy. I reflect on how much hatred I have inside me these days. A startling mixture of bristling rage coupled with a constant and prolonged hyper-sensitivity to my surroundings. Pretty sure it’s an unhealthy balance. 

My thoughts turn to the casualty. Had his kit saved him? Was he gone?

*

Back at Camp Bastion air strip I was relieved to only be carrying my protective equipment and rifle. Everything else had been burned as it wasn’t required, a task that I deeply enjoyed carrying out. I was getting out of here, hopefully never to return. The air strip is still a hive of activity, but, now, it all seems muffled though somehow. We who are returning have very little to say. Nearby I hear an energetic and bright eyed soldier talking of the foul smell in the air. If only he knew what was to come. As I exited the waiting area I read a banner hanging over the exit gate; “When you go home tell them of us and say: for your tomorrow we gave our today”.