Soldier I

by Kennedy, Michael

  As the sound of the second mortar bomb exploded in my ears, I don't know which had more impact: the high-explosive detonation or the interior of the sangar. I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought for a moment I must have been hit by the mortar and was halfway to heaven. Either that or I was seriously hallucinating. The sanger created the illusion that you had been transported into another world, a world of psychedelic lights, pin-ups and heavy rock music. The sound of Jimi Hendrix reverberated in my ears. Green, red and yellow lights flashed from every corner, flickering and reflecting off bandoliers of GPMG ammo, grenades, freshly oiled weapons and numerous glossy Playboy centrefolds. Along the wall in front of me stood the power supply for this assault on the senses. Dozens of old A41 radio batteries were stacked from floor to ceiling in great piles, linked by a myriad of coloured wires.

  After a few moments I became aware of an eerie figure amidst this confusion of sound and light. The figure was reclining on an old Army camp bed and wore only a chequered shamag around his head, an olivegreen towel around his waist and a battered pair of flip-flops on his feet. It was Scotty. His body, deeply suntanned, seemed sculpted in bronze – smooth, round, perfectly formed sinews and muscles linked and rippling into each other with statuesque fluidity; and his face seemed chiselled from granite – forehead solid and square, high cheekbones, and proud, aquiline, hawk-sharp nose, whose fierceness was mellowed by the soft grey-blue of his deep-set eyes. He looked like a demented DJ as he worked the switches to control this fantastic light display. The switches consisted of live .50-calibre Browning rounds, suspended from the beam running along the top of the sangar wall on wires of differing lengths. The electrical contact was completed by the .50-calibre rounds being swung like pendulums across dozens of nails driven at varying angles into the sandbagged walls. The nails were connected to the batteries by an array of wires.

  I stared at amazement as Scotty expertly flicked the Browning rounds across the electrical contacts with his fingers and toes to the heavy beat of 'Purple Haze'. I was intrigued. Where had the disco lights come from, in the middle of a defensive position on a plateau in Dhofar? As I looked more closely at the flashing red light just in front of me, I had the answer. They were all Land Rover headlights. But what about the different colours? I wondered.

  'Vehicle fluid,' said Scotty above the whine of Jimi Hendrix, answering the question that flickered across my bemused features. 'I filled the light lenses with brake fluid for red, hydraulic fluid for green, engine oil for yellow.' He paused and then added rather proudly, 'A combination of fluids and water gives you special effects.'

  The resourcefulness of the soldier is legendary. Fantastic stories of improvised articles created from the most unexpected materials had come out of the Japanese POW camps during the Second World War. But no one would believe this.

  Scotty had been famous for many things, including being the first Ansell's Bitter man on TV. That had come about when, unbeknown to him, his girlfriend had sent in an application on the back of a beer-mat, together with a photograph. He passed the preliminary stages with flying colours – an altogether different kind of selection. When it came to the audition, his good looks were matched by his drinking prowess. Unlike Scotty, some of the most macho-looking men he was up against could not drink a pint down in one before the eagle eye of the camera without giving away some sign of strain – an exaggerated gulp, moisture in the eye, a quick catching of breath. Even those who could were unable to pass the second test – ambling up to a bar in a natural and unselfconscious manner. With his success, Scotty's picture soon adorned advertising hoardings all around Hereford. To his dismay, trainee graffiti artists embellished his handsome features with moustaches, glasses and sexual organs of record-breaking dimensions. The first two additions really upset him! Yes, Scotty had been at the centre of many renowned escapades; his exploits were fabled. But this sangar took the prize.

  The hallucinogenic atmosphere in the sangar had even made me forget the pain in my hand. Having not heard any mortars impacting for some time, I decided to leave Scotty and his bizarre illusion and return to reality to await the chopper. With Jimi Hendrix hitting the last bars of 'Purple Haze', I brushed aside the blanket door. As I stepped through it, my mind spun with the contrast between the scene I'd just witnessed and the ordinary world outside. I looked up and narrowed my eyes against the harsh glare of the Arabian sun.

  Transfer

  The fierce white light cut into my face and burned my eyes. My hand throbbed and ached with redoubled intensity. My mind was overloaded with sensory input. It short-circuited and for a few moments the electrical impulse messages crackled around my brain in chaotic disorder like dry leaves wildly spun around a dusty cul-de-sac by a twisting gust of wind. After a few moments the storm subsided and I gradually began to focus on the near distance. Tubular grey metal protruding from just beyond my feet against a whitewashed wall background. White sheets beneath my stretched-out-legs. A bed. A hospital bed. What had happened? I must be in FST Salalah already! Somewhere I'd lost a couple of hours. All I could think was that another incoming mortar must have blasted me into unconsciousness while I was awaiting the chopper.

  'Get your kit together, we're transferring you to the general ward.' The disembodied voice pierced through the chatter of noisy thoughts inside my head. General ward – what does he mean? I looked down at my tightly clenched fist and slowly unfolded the gripped muscles. Not a mark, no flesh wound to be seen. I looked up at the white-coated figure standing by the door, a hand still on the light switch. The neon strip hummed above my head.

  'What's going on?' I voiced the words indistinctly, as if I'd just been punched in the mouth and was speaking through swollen gums and dislodged teeth.

  'We're transferring you to the general ward.'

  I glanced outside. It was still dark. 'What time is it?'

  'Six-thirty.' Seeing my confusion, he added, 'Wednesday morning.'

  'Wednesday morning!' I couldn't understand it. 'But I thought I wasn't due to change over until this evening. What's all the rush?'

  'An urgent case has just come in. We need the room.' He seemed reluctant to tender even this much information. I decided not to persevere.

  I followed the nurse down the corridor. Our footsteps echoed in hollow rhythm over the pale-brown and yellow lino squares that covered the floors of the corridor in a monotonous symmetrical pattern. The drab walls were pockmarked as if they'd been hit by gunfire. Circular chunks of the smooth pale-green surface had fallen away to reveal grainy craters of white plaster beneath. We walked past narrow opaque windows reaching up to the high ceilings. We walked past red No Smoking signs and faded posters pinned to the wall exhorting anyone who cared to pay attention to eat the right food, to take the right amount of exercise and not to drink to excess. We walked past mysterious doors leading off in different directions marked 'Private – No Entrance'. We walked past three tubular-steel trolleys parked up flush against the left wall of the corridor, their disproportionately small black wheels protruding at different angles.

  Finally we turned left into the general ward. It was a bit like the spider back at Hereford. It was split into regular sections, each one providing dormitory accommodation for eight men. A small rectangular office was strategically positioned at the end of each section, with a sliding window overlooking the beds through which the nurses could monitor what was going on in the ward.

  I couldn't see a great deal. Two safety-lights glowed dimly high overhead to reveal only the general position of the beds and the vague bulk of their sleeping occupants. I was shown to my bed and the nurse departed without a word. I didn't feel comfortable in this unknown environment. A thorough reconnaissance report on any new terrain was one of the first lessons of survival. I resolved to case the geography of the place and assess its inmates as soon as an opportunity arose.

  The lights went on at 7.00am, and the world around me slowly began to stir, shuffle and cough into life. What a sight met my eyes! A bunch of bleary-
eyed, burnt-out misfits, dishevelled and unshaven, endeavouring with trembling hands to struggle into their clothes and make themselves ready for breakfast. They were like bit-part actors in some slow-motion silent film version of Dante's Inferno. A grotesque contrast to the early-morning urgency I was used to on operations. I felt completely separate from them. I felt sharp and alert. My mind was already working out how I could beat the system.

  After breakfast and my reconnaissance of the ward area I barged into the office just at the end of my ward and fired impatient questions at the duty nurse.

  'What am I supposed to do around here all day? How can I pass the time?'

  The nurse looked up from his contemplation of a set of LFT charts and replied vaguely, his mind on other things, 'There are newspapers every day. And there's TV, radio…' and dropped his eyes back down to scrutinize the graphs.

  'That's no good for me, mate,' I insisted. 'I'm an active person. I'm used to moving around, getting things done, being involved. As it is I'm stuck here floating round in a sea of flopped-out alkies. I can't hack this.'

  'Well that's how it is. I can't see you've got a great deal of choice. And anyway it's no good complaining to me – I don't draw up the rules around here.'

  'But my body is used to regular physical exercise. I'll lose my edge after a few days of this routine.'

  'There is a three-mile morning run each day that you'll be taking part in from tomorrow onwards.'

  'Oh great! Three miles! That's a stroll to the corner shop for me. I'm used to doing ten miles a day.'

  There was a pause. He didn't say anything. He didn't even look up from the LFT charts.

  I could see I wasn't getting anywhere. I padded off to the lounge area and slumped in a chair. I picked up a newspaper and distractedly read what was going on in the outside world.

  An hour went by, then two. I dropped the last paper onto my knees in despair. I contemplated with gloom the prospect that the burning fires of my motivation and energy, fuelled by excitement, adventure and action, were about to be smothered by the blanket of routine and monotony that was descending on me. I had to do something. Suddenly, as I flipped through an old publication on the Second World War, a faded black-and-white photo of a large gun in action jumped off the page and hit me right between the eyes. I realised how close the hospital was to the Woolwich Artillery Museum. I remembered passing the road sign pointing to it on the drive in. That was it! The Mirbat gun.

  I got up and walked silently towards the fire escape I'd located on my earlier recce. My inner radar was alert for any signs from the nurses that they suspected my behaviour might be unusual in any way. With a last glance at the only office that had a view of the fire escape, I slowly eased up the quick-release bar, careful to avoid making any metallic clunks, pushed the door open and stepped out onto the studded black metal platform. I took a deep breath of fresh air with relish. Then, silently easing the door to behind me, I climbed swiftly and noiselessly down the latticed iron treads, as cautiously as if I were moving through the jungle under threat of an enemy ambush. I hurried across the grassy area surrounding the hospital and strode confidently along the nearby street.

  Once inside the museum, I fixed my eyes intently on the gun for so long that the rest of my surroundings began to melt into the background. The other artefacts on display, the other visitors walking around, the moustachioed security man dozing in the chair in the corner of the overheated room, arms folded, his head tilting forward and threatening to cast off his peaked cap at any moment, everything else faded away into the distance.

  I scrutinized the gleaming barrel on the twenty-five-pounder. I smiled to myself as I recollected that it had certainly been in no showpiece condition when I last saw it, pumping out a continuous barrage of roaring shells. Covered in dust and oil, riddled with bullet marks, and with the cross-country tyres deflated and shredded, it had been in real shit order. It was the last artillery gun of its type to be used by British troops in action. And what action it had been! A heroic, cataclysmic struggle, the final decisive encounter with the Communist Adoo pouring down from the Jebel like lemmings all those years ago. And yet it seemed like only yesterday. As my mind drifted back, the confused, urgent jumble of battle sounds rang in my ears again, faintly at first like the sound of distant surf, and then gradually getting louder: the whoosh of mortars and the thump of artillery; the hailstone rattle of machine guns and the whip-crack of rifles; the shouts and the screams, the groans and the gasps, the clamour, the cries and the curses of the men caught up in the middle of it all.

  And as I continued to stare, a picture began to take shape in my mind's eye, a painting by the artist David Shepherd. A print of it hung on my wall back home in Hereford, and I'd spent many a nostalgic moment gazing at it. It depicted three soldiers in a gun pit huddled around the breech of the twenty-five-pounder, with the Mirbat Fort under siege on the skyline. I studied the group of three men again now in my imagination and reeled off the litany I'd intoned so many times before: he's dead, he's dead, and his back is so badly scarred with gunshot wounds it looks like an OS map of the Brecon Beacons, an aerial photo of Crewe sidings. I was the lucky survivor. I could have been the fourth man. The situation was desperate. Volunteers were called for. I stood forward but I was turned down. I was needed to man the radio set. My mate went instead. He was a good mate.

  They were all good mates. I owe it to you lads to win through again.

  I felt reassured. I'd found a reference point. This was what was real – the adventure, the danger, the humour, the camaraderie under fire; not the alien environment of Ward 11.

  I returned to the hospital hoping to slip back into the routine as if nothing had happened. It was too much to expect. I was immediately confronted by one of the nurses. He was at 50,000 feet.

  'Where the hell have you been?'

  'The Woolwich Museum.'

  'Like hell you have.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'You know damn well what I mean. You've been drinking, haven't you?'

  'No way! There's no pub around here anyway. I've done a recce.'

  'Don't try and be clever with me. You've got some booze stashed in the boot of your car, haven't you? I know your type.'

  'You're wrong, mate. I've been to see the Mirbat gun.'

  'I've never heard of the Mirbat gun. I don't believe a word you're saying. Right! Into the office – I'm going to breathalyse you.'

  It was a real breathalyser, just like the ones the police use. As I put the mouthpiece to my lips and exhaled deeply, I thought of all the times I'd evaded the local police back in Hereford after wild nights in the PalU-Drin Club. Was my luck about to run out in the ignominious surroundings of Ward 11? We both stared at the contraption in silence waiting for the result.

  Negative.

  'There must be something wrong with this one,' he said, squinting at the digital read-out. 'We'll have to do it again.'

  Negative result once more.

  'I still don't believe your story. You can explain your case to the Major.'

  I was whistled in to see the Major, the top military psychiatrist. I went through my story again, but was noisily interrupted.

  'What battle of Mirbat? I've never heard of it! You've made it up. You've picked up the name from a newspaper and fabricated some cockand-bull story. You're having delusions.'

  'You could easily check it out, sir.' I could barely disguise the latent contempt in the word.

  The Major hesitated, looked me up and down, then said, 'All right, I will check it out. But if we find out you are lying…' His voice tailed off as he shot me an intimidating glare.

  I wandered back to my bed. I was confident. I wasn't going to let my mates down. No way was I hallucinating. Mirbat was no figment of a fevered imagination, no creation of a bullet-crazed brain. 19 July 1972. Mirbat was real all right, as real as the roar that flowed in over the breeze – London's pulse and heartbeat. And what was it that kept the heart of the metropolis beating? What was i
t that flowed through its veins, vessels and arteries? Oil! Oil to fire the generating stations, oil to power the lorries, oil to light the streets, oil to heat the buildings, oil to insulate the homes and keep the inhabitants in their cocoon of cosiness and comfort. And from where did it flow, that oil, where did it spring up? Arabia, where life was harsh, food was poor, shelter was scarce; where the monsoon was a continual scourge and mosquitoes a constant enemy; where, simply, people froze when it was cold and scorched when it was hot. Arabia, where to ensure the free flow of that precious stream I and my mates had undergone rigour, hardship and danger for months on end, fighting alongside tribesmen loyal to the Sultan. Some of my best friends had fallen in that inhospitable terrain, their life-blood seeping through the sand to mingle with the black liquid that even now, as I lay on my bed, was pumping through the nation's heart.