Battle Scars

by Jason Fox

  Over a year later, I was still lurching from emotional peaks to emotional troughs, but from the relative safety of a Mexican tourist resort. And as in war, there was no finishing line in sight. Just as I’d been in gunfights that had dwindled into nothing, only for our unit to walk into another ambush moments later, PTSD constantly tricked me into believing that a decision or change in my life was the endnote to a period of crushing misery.

  But it wasn’t.

  My latest false ending had appeared on that morning run. Spinning out with the realization that there was no safe hiding place from the ghosts of combat, I was now succumbing to my biggest fear: I had finally admitted to my failure at being a soldier – an awful, self-fulfilling prophecy hinted to me after hours and hours of therapy. The experts were telling me to quit in order to get better – they must have been right all along. And as I wallowed in the misery of the idea, I decided to succumb to the advice of both the psych nurse and Dr Beckelmann. It was time to leave the military. Once I’d landed back in England I was going to tell the people in charge that I wanted to be medically discharged. In my muddled mind, only walking away from the job – a job that had defined me – was going to fix the damage caused by war. My time in The Brotherhood, the union I’d dreamed of being a part of ever since I was a kid, would be over, though at least a huge weight was going to be lifted from my shoulders. I could look forward to rebuilding myself into a healthy, functioning bloke again.

  But I wouldn’t.

  Quitting was an unfamiliar idea. I struggled to recall the times I had walked away from anything in my professional life. Away from the military, several relationships had been ditched, for sure. I’d imagined a shrink would suggest that I was bailing out of my exams when I left school as a teenager; but I was walking away to join the Marines, which seemed to me like a step forward and a massive upgrade. I was known for my resilience and resolution in war, a stubborn bastard who liked to see challenges through to the end, as I first demonstrated during elite training later on in my career, especially in the jungle, which was a six-week test of survival designed to break anyone not wearing the toughest of mental armour. It had confirmed me as a capable soldier.

  The jungle was hard work because the conditions were so hellish. It would rain every single day and the heat was unbearable, often pushing towards forty degrees. In those tropical rainforest conditions, the foliage came alive and just about everything tried to eat me while I was there, such as spiders, snakes and all sorts of grim insects. One morning I had to scoop away a leech that had attached itself to the inside of my mouth while I’d been sleeping. In such testing circumstances, a soldier really needed to look after himself physically. Any cut, scratch or blister was liable to become infected with rot, or worse, a flesh-eating bug, while bacteria infections could lead to sickness, so all wounds had to be tended to constantly. The tasks I was required to perform proved demanding: navigation expeditions, live gun-firing exercises and mock casualty evacuation drills, all of them executed in lung-sucking heat across an environment that was so claustrophobic that the sun struggled to break through the canopy of leaves and branches overhead. Meanwhile, everything we did was subject to scrutiny, our work analyzed at a distance by a group of assessors who were experts in jungle warfare and survival and were able to crawl through the foliage to observe us unnoticed. Although we couldn’t see them, their presence felt intrusive and I always sensed them nearby, watching and listening. Sometimes an assessor might pop up from the undergrowth to bollock one of the lads for not having cleaned their gun properly. One morning I remember getting a tonne of grief for no particular reason, but it had been a test: the people watching had wanted to wind me up, to throw me into a mental spin, to see how I reacted in an inhospitable and oppressive environment under the pressures of doubt, the rot between my toes burning, my camouflage cream running with sweat, the battle to ensure my gun and ammo remained dry a never-ending struggle. The fact that so many of us didn’t know whether we were succeeding or flunking made it a psychologically self-destructive process. Some blokes probably talked themselves out of passing the phase through their own uncertainty.

  But I had thrived. Several hopefuls around me dropped out, or were told at the end that they hadn’t made the grade, but I carried on regardless. I’d proved myself to be focused and bloody minded, but I was also able to adapt to the environment I was fighting in. It wasn’t enough to be the toughest, fastest, most powerful dude in the game. An elite soldier required flexibility. In the space of twenty-four hours a raid might require a unit to jump from a helicopter, moving from hot jungle terrain to urban thoroughfares, all the while remaining undetected and prepared to engage with a hostile enemy. There was no room for rigidity. Meanwhile, functioning comfortably had been doable under those unpleasant pressures; the thought of abandoning jungle training midway through never crossed my mind. Not once. I didn’t understand the point of walking out, not when I had already made it so far. I had worked hard and the discovery of an unknown level of fortitude pleased me.

  That satisfaction had been there on a smaller level in the Marines too, especially when I’d finished the Potential Royal Marines Course. I had been pushed to my physical limits for a few days, climbing over assault courses and crawling through mud. When I was told that I had made it through and could join 40 Commando I’d walked boldly down a corridor at the base, feeling chuffed.

  So why was I quitting now?

  Because I had been scared by my own thoughts. During those darkest moments of combat or procedure, as the bombs and bullets peppered our position across that scorching valley, or in the thick of the jungle’s unrelenting heat, I knew I could trust my mind. I had control. After that run on the beach, the complete faith in my mental strength – which had teetered on the brink for a while – had vanished. I had continually questioned my purpose for the past few weeks; I had asked myself, What’s the point? And not just once, but on a number of occasions, which meant I was on a slippery path where suicidal thoughts might soon loom into view. I didn’t want to go there. I wanted to be free of the misery.

  I walked towards the psych nurse’s office, across the all-too-familiar sports fields, convincing myself that The New Me was only a medical discharge away. In Mexico, just the thought of walking away from the military had lifted the stressful burden of indecision almost instantly, because the choice wasn’t entirely on me. I hadn’t wanted to leave the job, but I had been told that doing so would be for the best. The toing and froing, the should I, shouldn’t I? It had brought so much anxiety that simply succumbing to the experts’ advice felt like a blessed relief. Like the times when I’d had to dump a nice girlfriend because she hadn’t been quite right for me. The internal debate was more agonizing than the actual break-up conversation.

  I waited in the psych nurse’s reception room, perched on the same plastic chair as always, habitually flicking through a crap magazine, staring at the bland decor and soulless artwork on the walls, mulling over what I was about to do. I still had time to change my mind, so should I? Once the nurse had called me to his office, my resolve returned. Quickly reminding myself of the relief I would feel seemed to make the process so much easier, and when I broke the news of my wobble in Mexico, the run, and my decision to quit the military, I felt instantly vindicated.

  ‘How do I get the ball rolling on me leaving?’ I asked.

  The nurse nodded and smiled reassuringly. ‘It might not feel like it right now, Sergeant Fox, but this is the beginning of the new you,’ he said, pulling out a pad of paper. ‘This is the fresh break you need to get well again.’

  The affirmation that I was doing the right thing actually excited me. Yeah, he’s right! I thought. This is the start of a whole new life! I became so excited that the details of my discharge flew by like a rush of white noise.

  ‘Look, I’ll file the report and then you’ve got to do a med board,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it’s where you sit in fro
nt of several hierarchy doctors and some people in the Navy. It’s usually done in an old building stuffed with antique furniture and hanging art, it’s all quite official. They’ll study your case and talk to you about how things are going. You’ll just have to explain what’s been happening and they’ll medically discharge you.’

  My resignation from a life of respect, purpose and military super-humanity was finalized with the swipe of a pen. Meanwhile, the official wording of my departure, the events of the past months and the process ahead, felt cold and clinical.

  ‘Service personnel with medical conditions or fitness issues which affect their ability to perform their duties will generally be referred to a medical board for a medical examination and review of their medical grading. In clear-cut cases where the individual’s fitness falls below the Service employment and retention standards, the board will recommend a medical discharge. In many cases, however, the patient will first be downgraded, to allow for treatment, recovery and rehabilitation. For personnel who do not make a total recovery, the board may recommend the patient is retained as permanently downgraded with limited duties, or they may recommend a medical discharge. The recommendation is then forwarded to personnel administration units or an employment board for ratification or decision and action.’

  My career of gunfights and dangerous missions had been reduced to grading and protocol; I looked set to become just another statistic in a military medical report. But I really didn’t care. A date was set for my board hearing and I worked on tying off the loose ends on my life within the job. In the weeks that followed there were admittedly one or two flashes of doubt, all of them linked to the camaraderie and prestige of working in The Brotherhood. They’d had my back throughout my career and I’d had theirs; I was about to leave that all behind, for good, but I couldn’t dwell on it too much. I hadn’t thought about what might happen to me once I’d left the base and moved permanently into a civilian lifestyle. Why, I couldn’t tell you. At that time I wasn’t thinking too hard about the consequences of my actions when it came to my career. Instead, I wasted mental calories wallowing in negative, reflective situations and the only light at the end of a dark tunnel was my medical discharge, a process that was happening quickly – a little too quickly.

  I went back to my job at the bar in the meantime, pulling pints and cleaning tabletops. Occasionally I’d catch myself staring into nothingness, a sense of loneliness drawing in as I detached from the people closest to me. When the day of my hearing came around, I was briefly struck with nerves. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I buttoned up my suit, checking the tie in a mirror like I was preparing for the first job interview of my life. And as I left the front door and made the long drive to Portsmouth, I reassured myself that I had found the beginning of the end to a heavy period of personal misery. It was done, and I would be fine. Those words even stayed with me as I sat down in front of the medical board, a table of officials in uniform working from a fancy room in a fancy building, surrounded by busts and old portraits of even more officious figures from the Navy’s illustrious history.

  ‘Well, Sergeant Fox,’ said the Naval doctor after a brief discussion of my case. ‘We’ve heard what you have to say and we’ve deemed it necessary for you to now leave the military. It’s for the best due to your PTSD and burnout. You will complete your final day on the fifth of April.’

  There it was in stone, my finality. I left the meeting feeling elated, buoyed by the idea that I was now finally getting on with my life. But how would I tell The Brotherhood? Their reaction terrified me so I decided to avoid them all, ignoring the idea of a leaving party. I couldn’t admit to the lads that I had been medically discharged because of my mental health, so I decided to ghost away from the job quietly, without any fanfare or announcements. There was no need for me to return to Poole ever again. Instead I could slip off, evading the blokes I had become enmeshed with over the last ten years. In the event of any unlucky encounters with someone from the base, I would stick to my previous alibi: I had tinnitus. My ears were banged up from all that gunfire and the condition had become so bad that my days of active service were done, so I was out – gutted. It was a lie, a big one. But unbound from The Brotherhood’s code of conduct, it didn’t really matter. Their trust was irrelevant. I was now in the cold, stuck in yet another false ending of my own making.

  20

  The soul-crushing familiarity of 6 April 2012 was the only thing that made it memorable. Feeling a little groggy, I’d hoped to open the curtains on a mega-sunny day, the twinkling sea view from my window stretching away in the distance, a hot girl jogging along the street, waving out to me as she passed, the birds chirping their morning chorus. All of it was a patchwork of positive images, the fantasy that I was about to live in the idyllic opening credits to some faded British sitcom from the 1970s. Instead, my morning appeared to be the same as usual, shadowed by overcast and grim-looking skies. A postman advanced moodily down the driveway, a clutch of bills and junk mail in hand; the seagulls, fattened by chip-shop scraps, squawked from the rooftops, their gloopy, mortar-blast crap wreaking havoc below. Everything was the same as it had been yesterday, and the day before. And the day before that. My new beginning, the one I’d believed would take place the second I’d left the war business, simply hadn’t arrived.

  Hang on a minute, I still feel the same, I thought. Nothing’s changed.

  In those fast-moving months since my board hearing, I hadn’t addressed my next steps or thought about what I could do with my new life. It was almost too frightening. The night before, a mate had asked me what I’d planned now that my military role was done. Where was I going to go? What was I going to be? What mission objectives had I set out for myself? But I had nothing, so I batted away the questions, pretending I’d been considering a few leads when in reality the calendar ahead was full of blank spaces. Every morning of every day since the medical hearing had been a flight of fancy where I imagined a different career, but I hadn’t acted on any of my ideas. Not even a cursory search on Google. Instead I convinced myself that something would come calling. Maybe an ex-Royal Marines Commando mate would emerge from the shadows to offer me a cool job in a high-end security company, or something similar. Anyway, I’d be fine, I had to be fine, otherwise what was the point in my leaving the job in the first place?

  And on the morning of 6 April I thought about what the future held and saw … nothing.

  The new me was no more than a black expanse of emptiness, a void stretching out to nowhere.

  Just several weeks into a new life, my mornings had become a soul-crushing debrief for the soul where I asked, over and over, Why do I still feel so down? At night, I would be in fun, safe environments, such as a restaurant with friends, and I’d wonder, Why does this still feel crap? With every snippet of despair, the penny would shift downwards a little more, like a cash prize on a Blackpool Tipping Point machine. Every pull of the arm pushed a layer of coins a little closer to the edge, with the loot never quite reaching the moment where it cascaded in a noisy crash. The realization of my existence out of the military was gradual. Each lesson took place in domestic situations such as an argument at home, or the condescending attitude of a stranger in the bar as I pulled pints and waited tables. And the inevitable explosion, when it came, was as noisy as any jackpot in an amusement arcade.

  No one’s really talked down to me like that before.

  Wait, I used to have all those blokes about me. They would be on either flank when things went horribly wrong. Yeah, we’d fought our way out of some hellish stuff together, losing mates in battle, not knowing if we were going to make it ourselves, but I miss those times. I had decent people around me. There was respect.

  I have no one I can really rely on now …

  I became crushed by an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Away from the military, I was left exposed to The Real World’s harsh realities, where people were able to let me down without consequence, relationships built on trust could collaps
e very easily, and competence and ownership of responsibility was shot through with flaws and excuses. I had no one to rely on but myself, and it scared the crap out of me. Approaching friends for help was a step too far. I turned my back on nearly all of them due to the embarrassment of my new life, but they were also too busy for me, fighting away in a war on the other side of the world.

  I was later reminded of a radio interview I’d heard with a former professional footballer. He’d been talking about what happens when a player retires from the game. ‘The phone stops ringing’, he explained. ‘There’s no more banter. The laughing and joking in the dressing room that filled the day vanishes overnight.’ Cut adrift from The Brotherhood, I understood exactly what he’d been saying. I was an experienced soldier; I wasn’t a civilian that did bits and pieces. The military was my life, even down to the brass tacks of my day-to-day routines. The senior officers told me when I needed to go to the doctor’s. My dental care was paid for. Even the jabs required for going abroad to tropical countries were sorted out for me. I had taken for granted the stuff that most people would have been chuffed to receive for free, because I was living in a bubble. Yes, it had been a dangerous bubble, but I was protected within it while working with some of my best mates. Now, the sense of an out-of-reach community wasn’t unlike the life mentioned by that footballer on the radio. As a consequence, I hit a new low.

  There were some vague stabs at replicating my old routines as I tried to get a handle on my changing existence. For a while I worked out in the local gym. It was an attempt to fight back, to remain physically elite, but I struggled for motivation most of the time. Without war there was no real incentive. Meanwhile, I stayed busy by working in the bar, convincing myself that I was buying time to evaluate the next steps and that what I was doing represented a positive move. My self-denying inner voice said that I’d made the right choices for my life, over and over, and I listened. But in truth, I knew it was awful.