by Owen Sheers
they don’t.
LISA
‘Friendly fire’.
That’s the one still makes more sense to me.
Being hurt by those on your side,
by those meant to protect you,
those meant to love you.
Yeah, that I recognise.
The drink, the shouting, the lies.
The hand on my throat while I slept,
the reaching in panic for the bedside light.
The boy you married
lying by your side but somewhere else –
shrinking, out of sight.
TAFF
It was night.
I mean Afghan night.
No lit windows. No cars. No street lights.
Just a few stars between the clouds and nothing else.
We put up lumis as often as we could –
slow-falling mortars burning bright –
but when each one came down again
so did the darkness, and with it the night.
I was on sanger duty. Half an hour left,
my eyes heavy with sleep.
It had been a bad week.
Hads had caught it just a few days before,
then my company were moved to a checkpoint
a mile from the FOB.
Right from the off, things had been hot.
We were there to stir things up, draw them out,
and it didn’t take long – pot shots, shoot and scoot,
RPGs finding their range.
Most days there was some kind of contact.
I won’t lie, I loved it again.
Like Arthur had said in the Thekla that night,
it was doing our job. What they’d trained us for.
And a chance to pay them back,
for Hads and what they’d done to him.
A few days before it happened
a patrol came under fire.
RPGs from a compound,
hitting nearer and nearer, too close to the wire.
I was spotter for the mortars, so we went to work.
I sent them in on some smoke I’d seen,
between two trees, over a wall:
One – fell short.
Two – went wide.
Three – direct hit.
Four – to make sure.
But I was wrong. Cos Terry wasn’t in there at all.
Just a farmer, his wife and their granddaughter.
Two years old, same age as Tom.
Gone.
They brought her in with shrapnel to her stomach,
a shark-fin of metal sticking out her navel.
She had burns too, all up her sides.
The medic did what he could, which wasn’t enough.
She died.
We’d killed their cow too and smashed up their home,
So the liaison officer filled out the forms, paid out the bills,
and then they left.
I can still see his face, even now.
An outdoor man, skin leathered by the sun.
The way he unwrapped the end of his turban
to wipe at his eyes, raw with what we’d done.
I’ve wondered since if what happened next
was some kind of punishment.
But I know that isn’t how it works.
That there is no one watching,
that the good lads will die, lose their limbs
while the nasty bastards go home whole.
But after I’d seen what I saw, after that,
well, you want to put some order on it all,
find a pattern, a god,
some kind of law.
ARTHUR
But you can’t, can you, Taff?
Reports do that. History books do that.
But you and me, we know,
it’s another word for chaos, war.
It’s like they teach us:
no plan survives a contact.
TAFF
Anyway, like I said, I was on the sanger, keeping watch,
eyes heavy, when at the end of one of those lumi drops,
they attacked. Full contact, on three sides.
Small arms, RPGs, a .50 cal.
Accurate too, biting at my sandbags,
kicking up dirt from the wall.
Quick as we could we set up a defensive shoot –
flares, rockets, tracer fire.
There’s a smell to battle. You learn it.
The certain tang of an RPG.
The dust and grit of an IED.
The bitter scent of your own hot gat.
The oily hint of a machine-gun belt.
But that night, suddenly,
there was something else.
LISA
‘Let them have it.’
That’s what the Apache pilot said.
American, called in for support.
Thought he’d found a nest of Taliban.
And he almost did,
if he hadn’t been off course.
He had authorisation.
Yeah, the inquiry told us that too.
And once he did, he opened up. Blue on blue.
Chain-gun, four Hellfires and two Hydrapods.
Turning his dark screen white
as his nose-mounted sensor
traced the bodies running into the night.
Big Ash, Stevo, Lee, Tim.
And you, my love. And you.
Friendly, friendly fire.
Blue on blue.
TAFF
I was blown off the wall. Broke my back in the fall.
When I came round the first thing I saw
was a pair of plastic chairs up against a tree,
lit up by the fires, the burning tents, the flares.
Like the ones we got in the garden they were,
one blue, one green.
Just the night before, Stevo and Lee had sat in them
playing their guitars, all night long.
But all I could hear, lying there, wasn’t them,
it was a dubstep song –
‘Get Up’ by Pinch, loud in my ears,
like I had my headphones on.
Banging away as that chopper smashed up our camp.
I stared at those two empty chairs, and as I did
the blue one started turning purple, and the green one brown.
They went hazy too, like they were going out of focus.
It was all still going down – that Apache firing off all he’d got,
but all I could hear was Pinch in my head,
and all I could watch was those two plastic chairs,
empty, lit up by the fires,
turning reddish brown and purple red.
I didn’t know it at the time, but it was pink mist doing it.
Drifting across from where the first Hellfire hit.
Pink mist. Clouding my view.
That’s the last I remember from that blue on blue.
Those two garden chairs, turning, then nothing.
Just a tightening of light and a heaviness of air.
LISA
Pink mist. That’s what they call it.
When one of your mates hasn’t just bought it,
but goes in a flash, from being there to not.
A direct hit. An IED. An RPG stuck in the gut.
However it happens you open your eyes
and that’s all they are.
A fine spray of pink, a delicate mist
as if some genie has granted a wish.
There, and then not.
A dirty trick you pray isn’t true.
White heat. Code red. Pink mist.
Blue on blue on blue.
4 ARTHUR’S STORY
ARTHUR
They called me King.
Arthur. Get it? Everyone gets a nickname.
And that was mine. King.
Rifleman Arthur Brown 256543.
But to the lads in the battalion, always King or Kingy.
New name for a n
ew family. That’s how it works,
and at first, don’t get me wrong, that’s what I loved.
A tightening down of the pride and the bond.
It starts with your regiment – their history, their badge.
Then as you go on, it’s a deepening
of where you belong.
Your battalion, your company, your platoon, your section,
all the way down to your four-man fire team.
Until that’s what you’re fighting for.
The man on your left and the man on your right.
Forget queen or country, the mission or belief.
It’s more about keeping your mates alive.
Or avenging the ones who’ve already died.
Cos that’s what fuels war, though no one will say it.
Love, and grief, its rougher underside.
It’s ironic really. The whole thing was my plan,
for us to link our arms again, join up together.
And at first it worked for Hads and Taff.
I mean, Hads found his skill as a Vallon man,
and a pride in each patrol that he brought home.
And Taff – he was just up for the fight from the off,
and he was good at it too,
even better after what happened to Hads.
But me? Yeah I enjoyed it, no denying that.
The contacts were a buzz – the real thing, no safety locks,
and sure beat parking Mazdas down Portbury Docks.
But fighting’s ninety per cent waiting,
and when you’ve got that much time, you think.
And that’s when the trouble starts.
Cos we’re privates, aren’t we?
And that’s not our job.
There’s this language card we got, before we deployed.
Part of the Aide Memoire for Herrick nine.
Mine’s in a box now, up at my mum’s,
but if she ever dug it out she’d see
how those pages of Pashtun and Dari,
illustrated with pictures,
tell the story of our time out there,
like a kid’s cartoon book of modern warfare.
Hello – Salaam
How are you? – Chetoor astayn
I – Ma
You – Shumaa
They – Oonaa
Do you need help? – Koumak kaar daarayn?
Stop or I’ll shoot – Drezh yaa za daz kawam
Do you need water? – Ao kaar daarayn?
You are under arrest – Bandeet maykonum
Man – Saray
Woman – Zan
Child – Halak
Human bomb – Insaani bam
Where is the pain? – Dard cheri day?
Blood – Khoon
Dead – Maray
Go home – Khaana burayn
Shot – Wishtalay
Go home – Korta dzai
One at a time – Pa waar yao
One at a time.
Five months into our six-month tour
and I was on my own.
Hads and Taff, both gone. Medivaced to Bastion,
then, in a matter of hours, home.
I was sure I was next, but I was wrong.
Somehow my ‘if’ never became ‘when’.
At least, not then. We lost others.
A sniper’s bullet, a roadside bomb.
Our tour was becoming the worst so far.
And then I left it, just like that,
two weeks, R and R.
We landed through cloud into Brize,
Afghan dust on our boots, our packs.
I flew in with a bunch of marines, back for good,
or until they scratched that combat itch
and volunteered again, like many would.
They were quiet, tanned by the Afghan sun.
A cautious look in their eyes as we waited
with our trolleys around the baggage belt.
Just like a regular airport, until you see the sign –
‘Weapon Collection Point’,
and then, in customs, a couple of wounded guys
here to meet their mates, dressed in civvies,
handing out plastic beakers of port,
one prosthetic leg each
showing from under their football shorts.
And then through the arrival doors –
girls in high heels and dresses,
made-up for a Friday night
waiting red-eyed in the morning grey
to see and hold their man again.
Babies who’d never smelt their dad.
Kids, holding painted sheets or flags.
Parents biting their nails, waiting, waiting,
for those doors to slide open,
and for the next to be him,
their lad, safe at last, and back.
I hope they were, but I know I wasn’t. No.
I was still there, course I was.
Worrying about the boys,
seeing all sorts of shit when I closed my eyes.
That’s why Gwen didn’t come.
I told her, I needed time.
And as I shouldered my kit, walked past the Spar,
with its ‘Real Deal’ signs and two-for-ones,
I knew I was right.
Time to drag myself from there to here,
to come home proper from the war.
GWEN
You didn’t even come to mine,
when you got into town.
ARTHUR
I told you. I had to see Mum.
She was in a bad way.
GWEN
And me? Hadn’t heard from you for weeks.
And after seeing Hads with no legs
and then the mess they made of Taff.
Arthur, I’d been worried sick for months.
ARTHUR
I know, babe, I know.
And I’m sorry.
But what’s done –
GWEN
– Is done. Yeah. I know.
And now you’re gone.
ARTHUR
Don’t say that, Gwen.
I’m here, ain’t I? Talking to you?
GWEN
It’s not the same, Arthur.
I hear you, it’s true.
I don’t know … You were gone
from the day you joined.
I mean, remember what that was like?
You, coming back on R and R?
ARTHUR
Yeah. I do.
I checked into a hotel outside Brize,
lay on the bed till dawn, scared to close my eyes.
Then got the bus to Severn Beach, first thing.
When I got there the place was empty, nothing.
Severn Beach. End of the line, literally.
Just the bridge disappearing towards Wales,
and the river, wide as a sea, sluggish under it.
Not even the fishermen yet, hooking their bait,
casting their lines. Just the houses, all safe and sealed.
Severn Beach – it’s where I’m from, since the age of one.
But … I may as well have been back in the field,
on patrol, or in some village in Afghan.
It all looked so strange, unreal.
I let myself in, dropped my kit to the floor,
then climbed the stairs, quiet, so’s not to wake Mum.
I opened the door to my bedroom.
Footie posters on the wall. The same checked duvet.
A kid’s room, a flashback to before this began.
Then, before I know it I’m on my knees,
opening the bottom drawer in the chest,
pulling out old T-shirts and vests
to uncover, under them, a row of eggs,
blown and bedded in their cotton-wool nests.
We had this thing, me, Taff and Hads.
By the bridge in Clifton,
the one where I’d seen that bloke take flight.
We�
�d dare each other to touch bits of rock,
pushing each other further and further
out on to the open limestone cliffs.
‘That bit there, with the moss.’
‘That white patch, the outcrop.’ That kinda thing.
One day I thought I’d give them a scare,
so I climbed further out, past the dare.
Went right out of sight,
slipping in under an overhang,
then sitting tight as they shouted my name,
shitting themselves I’d dropped and they’d never see me again.
Stupid, really. Still don’t know why, but I’m glad I did.
Cos it was only then that I noticed the bird.
A peregrine. Circling above me in the gorge,
screeching a repeating cry.
I looked to my right, and I saw why.
Her nest, scraped out of soil on the ledge.
And inside, right in the middle,
two perfect brown, speckled eggs.
Hads and Taff were still shouting for me
but I couldn’t hear them no more.
I edged along closer and, again I don’t know why,
reached out and took one, still warm.
And now, three years later, here it was again,
in my T-shirt drawer.
The first of twelve eggs I collected that spring.
Heron, jackdaw, crow, lapwing.
But the best was always hers, that peregrine’s.
I knew it was wrong, even then,
but I was sixteen and wanted something just mine,
a secret I shared with no one.
And maybe that’s why on that R and R
I went straight back to them,
cos each one, though empty, was full
with the feel of the day when I found it.
The touch of the wind, the taste of the rain.
Each was a moment alone, again.
A stealing of an egg, and more.
I put my hand into the drawer.
Picked up the heron’s, a pale sky blue.
Barely there on my palm, smooth and cool.
I closed my eyes and tried to see that day again.
March, I was bunking off from school.
A breeze in the reeds, the water over my boots –
