by Owen Sheers
He put his hand on the back of my neck.
TAFF
Good for you, but.
Yeah, I can see that, makes sense. It does.
So when you leave?
ARTHUR
A fortnight. Up to Catterick for basic.
TAFF
For how long?
ARTHUR
Six weeks.
TAFF
And then?
ARTHUR
Could be anything. Don’t know where, or when.
They went skiing last winter. Or exercise in the Rockies.
TAFF
And Gwen. She alright with this then?
ARTHUR
Yeah, she is. It’s good money innit? And gets better too.
TAFF
Yeah?
ARTHUR
You know, promotion. Or if you go away.
HADS
Away?
ARTHUR
‘Yeah’, I said, turning to Hads. ‘Iraq. Afghanistan.’
HADS
To war you mean?
ARTHUR
Yeah. They’ve already been.
But that’s why now’s so good?
It’s like my recruiter said today,
it’ll be a chance to do the job
they train you for.
Otherwise it’s like going to the fair,
but staying off the rides.
So yeah, I want to go to war.
HADS
You’re nuts, man. You serious about this?
ARTHUR
Course I am. Like I said, it’s done. I joined today.
TAFF
Two weeks you say? Before you go?
ARTHUR
Yeah. If you joined up now, you could too.
The sound of wind on a high hill
ARTHUR
I could tell Taff was in, he wouldn’t say no.
He’d been having a shit time for the last few months.
An apprentice on crap pay to a St Paul’s plumber
who got at him all day.
Then back to his high-rise with Lisa and Tom.
He loved them, don’t get me wrong.
But it was hard on him too.
Man of the house at just eighteen,
but not earning enough to clear the debt,
get them out of the rough.
Taff was hungry for a change, I could taste it off him.
He wanted more,
and now I’d put it in front of him,
that meant The Rifles, war.
But Hads, well, he was younger than us,
only seventeen back then,
still lived at home with his mum and old man.
Taff took a swig on his cider, looked hard at him.
TAFF
Waddya reckon?
ARTHUR
Hads just looked back, bit his lip,
like he couldn’t believe this could happen.
Then he turned away,
stared over the heads of the drinkers and dancers.
He was the youngest, but also the tallest.
Good-looking lad. Somali cheekbones from his dad,
Green eyes from his mum. A one-of-a-kind kinda kid,
which is how we were mates.
I’d seen him defend hisself since he was six,
firing-up much older boys.
You had to give it to him, good with his fists, up for the fight,
even then.
But now – he shook his head, still looking away,
before turning back to say –
HADS
Nah, can’t do it, sonner. Not for me.
Just started up at Next innit?
Up at Cribbs Mall.
It’s a good job. I ain’t gonna throw it away.
I mean, good luck, mate, really,
But nah. Me mum would kill me.
And my old man.
Count me out of this one,
you boys is on your own.
ARTHUR
But the seed was sown.
There in the Thekla’s hull, with the cider inside us,
and Massive on the system.
I didn’t say nothing to Hads right then,
but I knew, I did.
He would come too.
Cos I mean, what’s next after Next?
Hauling his arse up to Cribbs every day.
For what? A couple of years on the floor,
then, if he’s lucky, assistant manager, maybe,
after time served, more –
a nicer suit, some girl off the perfume store.
Nah. Hads was made for bigger things. He wouldn’t settle.
So when the army set up a stand next week,
right there in the Mall
between the doughnuts and the Disney shop,
Hads kept eyeing it, couldn’t stop, catching it every time
the sliding doors opened and shut.
He picked up a brochure on his break.
Read it at home in his bed.
Went back the next day and signed.
Twenty-two years, life on the line.
Taff had already done the same.
So when we left that day,
with snow pitchen on the Severn,
and fishermen blowing on their gloves,
catching the train from out by my mum’s,
all three of us were on our way
to become riflemen.
Sharpe’s regiment. Attached, back then,
to 30 Commando.
Three boys off to Catterick.
A suitcase each, a couple of cans.
Off to war, like boys always have.
Boarding a train, leaving home,
off to Catterick, to reap what I’d sown.
2 HADS’ STORY
The sound of boots on the ground, walking slowly
HADS
We called it Afghan roulette.
Every day, more or less.
Going out on the ground
to take our chances
with what was under it.
Low metal content. Infra-red switches. Trip wires.
Filled with nails, ball-bearings, human shit.
Or old Russian stuff. Anti-tank, pressure-plates.
Or just some bloke on a phone pressing ‘dial’.
Any of it enough
to turn you or your mates
into dust.
It was me who was meant to stop all that.
Up front, slow-sweeping my Vallon left and right.
Listening for the tone
that would stop me in my tracks,
send up my hand to freeze the patrol at my back.
After Catterick I wanted to be a medic.
And after we deployed too,
I kept applying for the course.
But they reckoned I was good at this stuff,
so they kept me at it.
Eighteen, and the lives of the patrol depending on me.
I had dreams.
Missing a massive IED, turning round too late
to see them eaten up by the earth – Arthur, Taff,
the whole section, my mates.
Gone in the blink of a boom,
a cloud of grey ash.
ARTHUR
But you didn’t, did you, Hads?
Never missed a thing. At least, not till …
They were right. You were good. Had some kind of sense.
You could smell when something was up.
When the atmospherics changed –
locals leaving, birds flying from a tree.
I don’t know how you did it, but believe me,
an ant could have farted
and I swear you’d have caught it.
Only wish I’d been as sharp
that night in the Thekla, back at the start
when I asked you and Taff if you wanted to join me,
when I planted the seed of that thought in your mind.
Remember where we were? Down in the hull,
> on the port side of the boat?
Just inches from that Banksy, sprayed the other side.
I saw it back on R and R.
You know the one. The skeleton rower,
a death’s head with a hood,
the prow of his canoe breaking the Plimsoll line.
That’s what was on the other side of us
when I told you I’d joined. Right there in the docks
where the press-ganged blokes
had once downed their drinks
only to find the king or queen’s coin.
If we’d remembered that rower, would we have sensed it?
How our journey was cursed?
Would his empty sockets, his hands on the oars
have made us more wise?
Would we have known the only coins we’d be taking
were the ones on our tongues, the ones on our eyes?
HADS
No.
You’re talking bollocks, Arthur. Again.
We wouldn’t have done nothing different
and you know it.
Even if we went back,
we’d still play it the same.
Cos it ain’t all bad, is it?
I’ll never forget the times we had.
I know myself now. I didn’t before.
You were right, I had to get out.
And I always would have,
just happened it was you
who showed me the door.
No more.
ARTHUR
Remember when we first got there?
The plane pitching in steep.
I thought Taff was going to shit hisself.
Even you was pale.
HADS
Yeah, right.
ARTHUR
You was. No shame in saying it now.
I was too. We’d all had OPTAG, but we knew
that was just a sniff of what we were in for.
And then, when we came down that ramp –
HADS
Wham. That heat.
ARTHUR
Like an opened oven door.
HADS
Yank voices.
ARTHUR
Dust on your lips. The landing strip, moonlit. A smell of –
HADS
Afghan. That Afghan smell. Like …
ARTHUR
Shit. And burning. Burning shit.
HADS
The looks on the lads going home,
the pats of their hands on our backs,
Their FOB-thinned faces.
ARTHUR
The beards, the moustaches.
HADS
Yeah, well all’ey, all of them.
Heading for their two days in Cyprus.
ARTHUR
To get pissed, naked, into fights.
HADS
Out of the system before they meet the wife.
ARTHUR
The kids.
HADS
It’s the size of Reading you know? Bastion.
ARTHUR
Yeah, and about as shit too.
HADS
Nah. Bastion’s got flushing loos.
ARTHUR
And a Pizza Hut, that bar, ‘Heroes’,
showing the games. Air-con gyms.
HADS
More ISO containers than down the dock.
ARTHUR
Bottling plant, vehicle pits.
HADS
Mocked-up Afghan village.
ARTHUR
Rose Cottage.
HADS
Yeah. Rose Cottage.
ARTHUR
And bloody hot. Half the boys lobster
by the end of that week.
HADS
Remember switching Kev’s lotion for oil?
ARTHUR
Poor sod, couldn’t work out why he was grilling like that.
HADS
Lost his hands, didn’t he?
On patrol from Jackson.
ARTHUR
Yeah. Both off at the wrist.
Now you see them, now you don’t.
What kind of fucking joke is that?
HADS
One I’m still telling, mate.
ARTHUR
Shit, sorry, Hads.
OPERATION AFGHAN
Man down! Man down!
ARTHUR
Hads presses pause on the game,
pulls his chair closer to the sofa
and, in one smooth move I’ll never get used to,
swings himself up and into the seat,
flicks the brake
and wheels to the bathroom.
Let’s give the man some dignity, no need to follow him there.
He does it on his own now, but it’s still far from pretty.
Twenty-one, and emptying a bag like he’s ninety.
I only see it now, after it all,
but Hads was shaped by war.
I mean even before I cornered him and Taff.
His old man for a start,
came here from the trouble in Somalia,
saw his own father shot, there on the spot, so wanted out.
Settled in Bristol, met Hads’ mum,
got hitched, moved into a house in Shirehampton,
one of those built after World War Two,
only meant to last a few years, but still there, standing.
So yeah, the Blitz made Hads’ home, and his home made him.
Cos if you’re a kid from the Shire
you got roads all over the place –
Outside your door, through your garden,
a motorway over your roof. But the ones in front of you?
They’re narrow and few.
And now look at him, wheeling back from the lav –
what war started with his granddad
it’s carried on with Hads,
cutting him down from six foot two to four foot three.
Rifleman Hayden Gullet, twenty-one, double amputee.
HADS
I still feel them sometimes.
I’ll wake and my ankle’ll be itching,
Or I’ll need to scrunch my toes. It’s frustrating,
cos I can’t do nothing can I? Just got to griz it out.
But yeah, my brain still thinks they’re there.
ARTHUR
I was there when it happened.
Routine patrol, showing the locals and Terry Taliban
we could still own the ground, take control.
Hads was up front, like he always was,
sweeping his Vallon like a metronome,
low and slow, reading the unseen earth.
And all of us behind him, trying to follow his route,
off the path, across a field.
Two kids just metres away, gathering crops,
and us in full kit; ospreys, packs, helmet and gats,
going firm at the slightest of sounds. It was hot, tense.
Just three hours from the gate,
and I’d already drained my CamelBak.
The ICOM chatter was high, so we were taking it steady.
Hads wasn’t happy, so he changed the route again.
The Corp didn’t question him, he knew he’d saved us before.
For three months now he’d always brought us home.
But we were jumpy. The Sarge told him to hurry.
The whole patrol was out in the open, in the kill zone.
HADS
I could feel it there, somewhere. Close.
There was a bridge up ahead.
I’d already seen two locals
take the long way to reach it,
avoid the patch we were in.
I was looking for a sign –
some crossed sticks, a pile of stones.
That would be there too, somewhere.
I swung the Vallon again.
Left, right. Left, right.
But nothing, just the midday sun
burning my neck, the boys going firm,
dotting the fiel
d,
the terp in the FOB, relaying the comm.
Then –
ARTHUR
The tree line opened up.
Muzzle flashes in the bushes,
the whine and whizz of Afghan wasps
as the rounds came in and our boys hit their buckles,
flat to the ground, faces in the dirt,
doing what they could so’s not to get hurt.
HADS
I knew we had to get out, find cover.
I’d seen an irrigation ditch, fifty metres ahead,
if I could find a safe route over –
The boss ordered suppressing fire,
and as the boys laid down a volley of lead
I took a step back.
ARTHUR
I saw it go up.
A sudden tree of earth and smoke,
the ground dropping and rising,
like a heartbeat under the soil.
It threw Hads twenty metres at least.
I can still see him now, as clear as then.
Arching in the air, his arms flung wide,
as if he was back at school again,
high-jumping for top spot – a record-beating Fosbury flop
that left his legs behind.
The sounds of a hospital
HADS’ MOTHER
At first, when they pulled back the curtain
I felt relief.
A wave of warm joy.
There’d been a mistake, a crossing of wires.
This wasn’t my boy.
How could it be? There’d been a wrong call.
Whoever he was, he didn’t look like Hayden at all.
Poor sod didn’t have his face.
And yes, I did think of his poor mother too,
the woman who’d have to take my place.
