The bloke in the next bed stirred. He'd come in two days before and hadn't said a word yet. He's just lain on his bed, staring into space, eyes as dead as pebbles. He was saying, 'It was the tooth that killed him. The gunshot wound was the start of it, but it was the tooth that killed him.'
I glanced over. He was looking straight at me. His eyes had become moist, human again. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
'I was a trained medic. I'd worked in three hospitals. I should have known better. A jagged piece of filthy, decayed tooth must have gone into the lung tissue and just festered. That's what killed him. It wasn't the gunshot wound, it was the miserable piece of rotten tooth that killed him.'
He lay back on his pillow and stared ahead again, but the tears continued to flow. 'He was my best mate. He'd caught a high-velocity in the jaw. He was lying on his back, choking – not with blood or vomit, he swallowed his tongue. I yanked his tongue forward and pulled every bit of mess out of his mouth I could find. I was sure I'd got everything out of his passageway. I was sure I'd completely cleared the cavity of all the bits of teeth. He made it back to the UK all right, but he was having increasing problems with his breathing. Pneumonia or pleurisy, I don't know. They were pumping him full of penicillin, trying to get him better from the infection.
'I used to visit him in hospital as often as I could. It gave Jean a break. She had her hands full as it was with the kids. This particular day, he seemed fine one minute, a bit pale, but fine. The next minute he was no longer seeing what I was seeing, hearing what I was hearing. His eyes had glazed over, his ears somehow stopped up with the effort of trying to get his breath. I called the nurse.
'He twisted his head fiercely from side to side, his mouth working away as if he was chewing a piece of leather. Suddenly he would lie still, and his mouth would gape open for a while at the point of some momentous inner struggle. Then the head would start again. Strange sounds, not of this earth, emerged from his mouth and spoke of deep, agonizing distress. He strove to turn and lever his body off the bed, driven by some deep instinctive urge, as if he could pull through if only he could get himself into an upright position.
'He lifted and twisted his head one last time, more slowly now, and he looked at me, fear and questioning in his eyes. Questioning in his eyes. Then, slowly, slowly, he sank down with a rasping sigh, the life visibly draining away from him. I stared at him in complete and total helplessness, such impotence to alter the course of events as I'd never before experienced. A few last twitches and then his body was still, as if some great sinking battleship had finally come to rest on the bed of the ocean.
'The doctor came and went. I sat there for an age, staring at his silent form, hoping for an eyelid to rise, for a flicker of movement in the chest, staring for so long that my eyes began to play tricks on me and I imagined I saw a tremor of movement in his solar plexus. Eventually, I slowly got up, stiff from staring, and walked away. I was feeling heavy. I knew I had to tell Jean.
'She was laying the table for tea when I came in. She had a plate of buttered sliced bread in her hand. Her two kids were shouting excitedly, running around, tugging each other's sleeves. Her eyes met mine and she knew straight away. The welcoming smile faded and in an instant turned to dawning horror. She didn't rant, she didn't rave. She didn't burst into tears, she didn't shake with rage. There were no silent mouthings of incredulity nor any desperate fist-clenched challenge to the heavens to explain why. She neither fainted nor slumped in a chair, nor gripped the edge of the table. She was rigid, transfixed by a charge of emotion that overpowered her ability to think, feel or speak clearly, that seemed for an instant to have chased the very soul out of her body. She simply, slowly and deliberately, closed her eyes, was silent for the eternity of a moment, then whispered with a voice that was not her own, "Please go." With the two kids now silently staring at me, uncomprehending but sensing that something momentous was taking place, I turned, opened the door and quickly left. I hadn't spoken a word, not a single word.'
'Maybe the shock of the high-velocity bullet that hit him made him suddenly catch his breath and inhale the piece of tooth into his lungs,' I suggested, trying to offer some comfort.
'How could you tell them what it was really like down there?' he continued, apparently without hearing what I'd said. 'They all wanted to buy you drinks in the pub and ask you how it was, but how could you tell them what it was really like? To most people, the war was just an interesting diversion, something that happened each night for ten minutes on the Nine O'Clock News. Some people thought the Falklands was an island just off the coast of Scotland.' He leaned back over in my direction and fixed me with his eyes. 'I didn't want to leave when it was all over. That's where the lads had fought and died. That's where you'd been through it together. How could anyone else possible understand? No one could possibly know what you had been through.'
'That's true, mate, that's true.'
'They told me I'm suffering from POST.'
'POST, PTSD, ABR! Bullshit! It's all bullshit!' I exclaimed angrily. 'It's just names, boxes. They think if they can put a name on it, put it into a box, then everything's explained, that's all's well with the world. You've gone psychosomatic. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just shell shock. That's all you've got. Good old-fashioned shell shock.'
I looked at him. He could see from my eyes that I'd been there too. We were mates together, mates who had never met. A veil of gloom and fear seemed to lift off his face.
'You know something? They can't really cure you in here,' I went on. 'All they're after is your mind. You're just a case study, one for the archives, a bit of research for the thesis they're writing. They've got a tape recorder hidden on the desk. There's a little red light when it's on. You'll see it. They record everything you say so they can have a good laugh with their pals afterwards.
'If you think you're Napoleon now, nothing's going to stop you waking up when you're ninety-three and still thinking you're Napoleon. There's only one way you can be cured, and that's from within yourself. It's got to come from inside. You've got to get a grip on yourself. No one can do that for you.'
As the evening wore on I finally dozed off to sleep, the man's words spooling through my mind on an endlessly repeating loop tape. 'How could you tell them what it was really like?'
* * *
'How could I begin to tell you what it was really like?' It was the next day and I was struggling to get through to the psychiatrist. 'I could describe to you the terror, the disorientation, the sheer loneliness of being caught in a blizzard late at night driving across the mountains, when the road disappears, when everything is eerily hushed, when you don't know what is ditch and what is road or even which side of the road you're on, when the snow is so heavy the windscreen wipers begin to slow down under the accumulating weight, and the flakes stick to the screen even though the heater is trained full onto it, when you can't stop because to stop would be even more dangerous than to carry on, when you feel like a man slowly sinking in quicksand as you are sucked into the centre of the snowstorm, when your mind tells you there are other people in the world but your heart tells you are the only one there.
'I could tell you all this, and this is something within the spectrum of your own experience. We've all been in a snowstorm, we've all driven late at night through rain and snow and mist. I could tell you all this. But unless you had been where I was at the precise time I was there, you could not know, you could not feel, you could not be completely submerged in that total terror, that incipient suppressed panic. Your mind could not have been stretched taut in that relentless nerve-strain. Now look at that gap between my experience and your reaction to my relating it. Multiply that gap by ten, by twenty, by a hundred and you have some idea of the experience of war, the sense-crush of combat, the mind-blast of battle, the trauma of violent death.'
I looked at the psychiatrist and he showed no reaction. I wasn't getting through to him. I was frustrated, angry. It felt as though I was trying to ru
n through waist-deep water.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a detonation, a huge, cataclysmic detonation. The next moment I was coming to, lying there, dazed and confused, for what seemed like an age. I prised my eyes open. A shaft of light came in. I heard the sound of voices. It felt hot. I could smell the sweet, sharp, prickly smell of cordite. My mouth tasted dry and dusty. My hands were working, fists slowly clenching and unclenching. I felt the rough woollen material of a blanket.
A blanket! I sprang up with a start. Christ, I've been dreaming! A full technicolour dream complete with stereophonic sound. It was dawn. The ward was stirring into life. My new-found mate in the next bed had lit up a cigarette and was waving the match in the air to extinguish it. Red phosphorus – the smell of cordite! The nurse was pushing a metal trolley full of surgical equipment rattling on steel trays down the middle of the ward. The doors through which she'd just exploded were swinging violently, neon light glinting on their aluminium panels.
* * *
I walked slowly down the corridor towards the chief psychiatrist's office.
'You are a time bomb, trooper, a time bomb just waiting to explode. But we can defuse you!' The Colonel's words rang through my mind as footsteps echoed off the bare walls. I thought of Tommo the Scouse exploding with anger on selection all those years before. It hadn't done him much good. Or maybe it had. Maybe he wasn't meant to be in the SAS – he might never have made it past Operation Jaguar. That explosion might have saved his life. Maybe he was better off out of it after all. Maybe he'd got himself a nice little number back with the Royal Fusiliers and done very well for himself. Perhaps he'd found the secret: expression of emotion rather than suppression. Why bottle up all your feelings, build up the pressure, build up the stress until your heart fails, your stomach ulcerates, your liver collapses or your brain gets blown apart by a stroke?
The Colonel thinks I'm going to explode. Maybe I should explode, get it off my chest, go out with a bang rather than a whimper. I've fought my fights, I've waged my wars. Perhaps it would be a fitting end to a drama-filled career. Shit or bust! Attack – the best form of defence!
One thing is for certain. I'm not going to play second fiddle to some jumped-up civilian psychiatrist who doesn't know the first thing about combat. I've never let the system get me down before. If I had, if I hadn't shown initiative and self-confidence before, I wouldn't be here now. If I hadn't broken the rules at Mirbat and sent the first radio message to Um al Gwarif in plain-language morse, crucial time would have been lost; if I hadn't used the knuckleduster in Hong Kong, I would have been dead on the street; if I hadn't demanded that the hospital orderly in Stanley Jail give me a tetanus jab, I could have had serious health problems; if I hadn't stood my ground with the RE colonel back at Southwood Barracks, I would have spent an unpleasant twelve months as a lance-corporal rather than a sergeant; if I hadn't insisted on seeing the captain on the Andomeda, we would have lost a pallet full of vital equipment. I had never grovelled to another man in my life and I didn't intend starting now.
I strode into the office without knocking. The psychiatrist looked up, slightly startled. He was as ugly as an iguana. Folds of yellow-green skin clung to his prominent facial bones, he had dark rings around his eyes and his expression was as bleak as a wind-ruffled winter puddle. He lit another cigarette from the remains of one he'd just finished, and screwed the bent dog-end into the layer of ash in the bottom of the ashtray amid the burnt-out remains of a dozen other cigarettes. Christ! Not only a civilian in charge of the mental health of the British Army, but a chainsmoker at that! What have you got to hide, mate? What's gnawing away at your insides? Why do you need to smoke so much? I've no problem going three months in the jungle without a drink. You wouldn't last three days there without cigarettes. You'd be crawling up the trees!
A thick blue haze hung in the room like a morning mist. I'm not having this. I'm used to the great outdoors. Plenty of fresh air. Without saying a word, I marched over to the window, rattled it open and took some deep breaths of the air wafting over Woolwich Common. He didn't like it. It was late November and he got an icy draught on the back of his neck. I sauntered back round to the front of the desk and, without waiting to be asked, sat down. I was in a defiant mood. The psychiatrist picked up a folder, his eyes not leaving me for a moment. He placed it before him and grasped a pencil from a plastic container. Then he looked down. The pencil hissed across the page as he furiously scribbled notes on my report.
17
The Final RV
In the days before steam, when tall-masted clippers plied the tea route between China and Europe, speed was of the essence. The ship that reached port first got the benefit of the markets. Moreover, the quicker the journey, the better the condition of the cargo and the higher the price it could command. The speed of the ship depended on the skill of the seamen in unfurling and reefing the sails. The men with the most dangerous job on board were those who worked on the uppermost masts, hauling the huge sails in and out. Safety was not of paramount concern. It was not unknown for one of the topmost riggers, subjected as they were to the highest winds and the greatest pitch and roll of the swell, to lose his grip and go plunging down a hundred feet or more. If he hit the deck, it meant almost certain death. If he fell into the sea, he might just escape with shock and bruising. A seaman who survived the fall intact was encouraged by the older hands to climb straight back up to the top of the mainmast so that he might not lose his nerve forever. This was exposure therapy of the most immediate kind.
BET they call it today – behavioural exposure therapy – a legacy of post-Freudian psychoanalytical theory. I learned all about it in Ward
11. They gave me pills to break down the barriers and allow the traumas of my operational experiences to come to the surface. Through being exposed and confronted, the traumas could hopefully be cured. As I
drove back from Woolwich to Hereford, I thought I would undertake a bit of freelance BET myself. I decided to pay a visit to the scene of my so-called crime. I would have a pint in the pub where the argument with the mayor had taken place. Not only would it satisfy my self-willed bloody-mindedness, but it would have the additional benefit of allowing me to re-orientate myself into familiar surroundings after the wasteland of Ward 11 before facing the Colonel on camp.
It was lunchtime and the tap-room was surprisingly busy. I was hoping to find Tak there. A drink and talk about the old days, a bit of exposure to his laconic Fijian humour would be just the aftercare I needed. I sat down at the bar, ordered a pint of draught Guinness and quietly smiled to myself. No one said anything. It was as if nothing had ever happened. I relaxed and let the normality flow over me.
I was halfway through my pint when I spotted the infamous Lynda. She had become almost as much a part of the Regiment as the clock tower itself. The night I'd seen her all those years before, tumbling in the sheets with Geordie before Sickener 1, had not been her first visit to camp, nor her last. She'd had as many willing partners as there are daisies on an uncut lawn. Now in her mid-thirties, the passions of youth tempered by the pummellings of experience, she had acquired a hard, no-nonsense manner which on the few occasions when I now saw her I found an irresistible challenge.
I gave her a wave and she breezed over, exclaiming jauntily, 'Hi, soldier. How're you keeping? I haven't seen you in ages. Where've you been?'
'I've just returned from down south – training exercise, that sort of thing. What are you doing with yourself these days, Lynda?'
'I'm training to be a psychiatric nurse.'
'A psychiatric nurse! I know all about them. They're all as mad as hatters. What made you choose that career?'
'It's a case of if you can't beat them, join them.'
'When you qualify, you should set up a therapy clinic on camp.'
She completely missed the veiled reference to her erstwhile penchant for helping the lads release the tensions of Army life. 'Why? Are you all screwball down there?'
'Yeah! Didn't
you know there's a chopper on constant hover 500 feet above the camp to make sure no one escapes?'
'I can believe it.'
'If you opened a clinic, they'd be queuing up at the door to see you – especially if you had your black stockings on!'
'Oh yeah, and my whip?' A hint of anger was creeping into her voice. She was beginning to take me too seriously.
'Why not? I had the whip in Hong Kong. It didn't do me any lasting harm.'
'Physically or psychologically?'
'Physically. You'll have to analyse me to see if I suffered any brain damage or not! I'll be your first patient if you'll have me.'
'Sure, I'm game.'
'I've no doubt you are! I look forward to meeting you on the couch then, Lynda.'
By now she'd cottoned on to the doubles entendres, so I drained my Guinness and beat a hasty retreat. I didn't want to tangle with her newfound temper. She'd recently gone over onto the loony fringe of the women's lib movement. And that was even more dangerous than the loony fringe of the socialist movement!
Soldier I Page 31
