Rain (28 page)

Davenport was blown back by the blast, hurled against the Scimitar’s tracks, the impact breaking three ribs and slicing his right bicep. Dazed, ears ringing, when he got up he saw Tom. When he saw that both Tom’s legs were gone and with them the tourniquets in his trouser pockets, Davenport reached for his own and with a speed and calmness that he never thought he had yanked them both tight over Tom’s spraying stumps until the flow of blood stopped to a trickle. He hadn’t realized it would be so easy; the tourniquets worked just like they had said they would in the lessons at Bastion. The maw at the boss’s shoulder was going to be harder to deal with, although the blood vessels there appeared to have been almost cauterized by the blast.

Dusty must have sent a sitrep on the radio, as Davenport soon saw Trueman’s wagon race up the track, having leapfrogged Thompson’s in the order of march, and screech to a halt behind theirs, dust flying forward off it as it braked. Davenport wondered if there were more IEDs in the area but realized that as long as they stayed in the track marks they should be all right. He just wanted to get the boss out. He
looked at his own sleeve and with more curiosity than alarm noticed that it was soaked in blood from his own wound. But it was not as red as his trousers or his face, both of which had been spattered with Tom’s arterial bleed as he had put the tourniquets on.

Davenport saw Trueman leap off his wagon and scramble over. Freddie stood over Tom for a tiny moment, his face collapsing at the sight before him, before reaching down, squeezing Davenport’s shoulder and then kneeling by Tom. He looked at him as though pondering how to pick him up, like a father who doesn’t know quite how to pick up a newborn baby from its mother’s chest, and then with one huge heave he swooped him up, cradling him and putting him gently on the front deck of his own wagon. He jumped onto Dusty’s turret.

For Trueman every minute of his long career had led to this moment. Rounds tearing the air around him, he dipped his head into the turret and spoke to Dusty in a calm, measured voice. ‘Right, Dusty, you stay here. I’ll give you Ellis to drive you. I’m taking the boss and Dav to an HLS to get them the fuck out of here. You and Jessie’s wagon hold this track. When we’ve got the boss away we’ll set about getting you guys back. Fucking pump that wood full of shit. Nothing survives in there, OK?’

‘No probs, Sarge. How’s the boss looking?’ Dusty yelled back. Trueman was silent; his eyes said everything. Dusty nodded, slammed six rounds into the feed tray and screaming and swearing with every shot ploughed round after round into the wood until the turret was full of cordite and the tears he never realized he was crying mixed with sweat and black powder.

Trueman stepped from Dusty’s back on to his own wagon and screamed to Ellis, ‘Ell, Three Zero needs a driver. Get
the fuck out and drive for Dusty. I’ll be back for you once I’ve taken the boss back.’

Ellis gulped, looked out of the turret, saw the boss and Davenport on the front deck and felt a round wing past his head. White with fear, he gathered himself and cross-decked, picking his way over the two casualties and then on to the front wagon and finally slithering into Davenport’s empty driver’s compartment. He put on the ANR and over the intercom screamed, ‘Fuck fuck fuck! Dusty! You there?’

‘Yeah, mate.’

‘Then keep going spastic! Fuck them up!’

‘What do you think I’m fucking doing!’ screamed back Dusty as rounds poured out of the Rarden, covering Trueman’s casevac wagon, which was now picking its tortuous way back down the track towards the HLS, Trueman peering out and keeping the driver in the ruts, wincing at every bump, which he knew must be loosening Tom’s tourniquets.

Davenport lay next to Tom on the front deck trying to shield him from the tracers that kept darting out of the wood to skim over their heads. He didn’t feel scared and kept shouting to Tom over the noise of the engine, ‘Stay here, sir. Stay here, sir. We’re going to patch you up. We’re going to patch you up.’ He looked back up the track and saw the two front Scimitars firing pitiless salvos into the treeline. The long grass was now ablaze after dozens of HE shells had spat fire into it; smoke and dust kicked up by the Rardens shrouded the wagons in a fuzzy hue. Davenport leaned over Tom and felt for a pulse with two fingers jammed against his neck. It was terribly weak. He stroked Tom’s head, spitting on his hands and trying to wash away a bit of the blood from his face.

Finally they were through the killing zone and reached the cover of the compounds, and after another three hundred
metres arrived at a field behind Fast Pace mercifully away from the contact. A stretcher party prepared by Brennan lifted Tom off the wagon. One of the medics calmly asked Davenport to keep his knee pressed into Tom’s shoulder as he deftly unwound a drip and started putting needles into him. Another shouted his pulse and breathing rates to Trueman, who was sending the MIST up through battle group.

Ten miles away this information was relayed over the roar of rotors to the MERT. This was their second call-out today and their second triple amputee in as many days. The doctor shouted to one of the nurses as he heard the report come over the radio, ‘This bloke sounds fucked. With that pulse and that bleed he’s not going to make it.’ The nurse, a girl of eighteen with freckles and dimples in her cheeks looked at him and nodded through sad eyes.

Back on the ground Trueman kept looking into the sky and shouting, ‘Where is this fucking MERT? Where the fuck is it?’ while Davenport kept his knee pressed into Tom and shivered as he felt his kneecap scrape against what was left of the shoulder blade. He wiped Tom’s brow with his sweat rag; someone had passed him a bottle of water, and he dabbed at the skin on the broken forehead as the medic tried desperately to bring Tom back from the brink. The medic had punched a line into his sternum to give fluids direct into his bone marrow as vein after vein at Tom’s extremities shut down and closed off its flow.

‘There you go, sir, there you go. We’re going to get you home now,’ Davenport said over and over, hoping that Tom could hear him and at the same time not feel any pain. Tom was making gurgling noises from his mouth, and the caught, laboured breaths from his exhausted lungs had now steadied into near-imperceptible rises and falls of his chest far too many seconds apart from each other.

Tom shook off his dream and woke up. He saw everyone around him and wondered why he was getting so much attention.
What had happened? Aren’t we still in contact? Why are we back here and not on the track?
He looked up and fixed Davenport with his one-eyed gaze;
Dav would know
. ‘Where are we, Dav? Where are the boys? How are the boys?’

‘They’re all right, sir. We’re all OK, we’re all OK. We’re just going to get you back. You’ve had an accident but we’re going to make you better.’

Tom grunted his thanks. He still didn’t understand why they were making this fuss. His head hurt; he must have banged it. Had he tripped running back down the track and hit it on the front of the Scimitar? He could see Trueman above him now, who then pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and threw it.
Why is he doing that? He must be trying to mark an
HLS
or something. Ah yes
. He could see the helicopter now. The rotors pulsed in his ears and made the blue smoke whirl around him and then dilute into the brown dust whipped up by the downdraught. Tom liked the breeze. The heli flared thirty metres away from them, as though it were a surfboard cresting a wave, before gently touching its belly on the ground.

Again Davenport knelt over Tom and hugged him. Then Tom felt himself being lifted up and carried into the dark womb of the Chinook, where more people, wearing clean, undusty uniforms, crowded around and helped him. Davenport was with him on the heli as well; he must have been hurt too. With his right arm he pulled Davenport towards him; he couldn’t move his left one.

‘Are we going home, Dav?’

‘Yes, sir, we’re going home. You’re going home to your mum, sir.’

A warm surge swept through Tom, and he just wanted to close his eyes and take a nap. He wanted to sleep in his own
bed through, not a hospital one. He murmured quietly to Davenport, whose ear was now pressed against his lips to catch his faint whispers, ‘Take me home, Dav. Take me home. I want to go home.’ He squeezed his hand; Davenport squeezed it back.

Tom was back in the garden. He reached out to his father, whose arms folded around him and whisked him up off the ground with a throaty great laugh. Constance ruffled his hair. He was home.

Davenport squeezed his hand again. No return came.

Two minutes later, after a frenzied effort to resuscitate the pile of splayed and shattered meat and bone that the IED had created out of Tom, the emergency physician pronounced him dead.

The helicopter slowed its frantic pace.

They lined up in three ranks behind the church, immaculate in their service dress. Their drill boots were polished harder than they had ever been. The whole squadron was there; they had come down by bus from the barracks that morning. They had had their medals parade the day before and after today would all be going on leave. As the rest of the congregation went in the front in dribs and drabs the younger soldiers thrust out their chests to show off their first medals. Frenchie and Trueman were inside the church with Constance.

Brennan went down the ranks. His long rack of medals gleamed in the sunshine, and when he spoke to one of the boys it was not with parade-ground harshness but quietly and kindly. He came to Dusty and Dav. Davenport’s arm was still in a sling, but he had struggled into his uniform for the service. Brennan looked down at them, both even shorter than he was. Dusty’s eyes blazed defiance, as if willing tears to dare to come. Brennan smiled. ‘You all right, boys? Stay strong for me in there. Stay strong for the boss.’

‘Yeah. We’re OK, sir.’ Davenport spoke for both of them. Dusty found that no words came from his mouth. ‘We’ll be fine. Just, just I never been to a funeral before.’

Brennan nodded. ‘I understand. They’re shit, fellas. Not going to lie. People take them the wrong way. People stand up and try to speak as though it’s a celebration of life. Which is bollocks. The whole thing’s a fucking tragedy. So listen, if you get in there and you want to cry, then crack on. I ain’t gonna stop you. In fact, I’ll probably be joining you.’ He broke off
and looked at the ground. ‘I’m proud of you boys. I’m proud of what you both did that day. My little lions. Remember. For as long as you live or as long as you’re in this man’s army, remember that day and use it. Use it so that one day you will be able to rescue other boys from being carried away in coffins. Remember Mr Chamberlain. He was one of the best.’

Dusty was still unable to speak, and scrunched up his freckles against crying. Davenport gulped but was still resolute. He managed to whisper back, ‘We will, we will, sir.’ Brennan walked on down the line and picked off pieces of fluff from forage caps or smoothed out creases in jackets. He finished and stood in front of them. He spoke firmly but not loudly.

‘Well, guys, I wish we weren’t here. But thank you. Thank you all for looking so smart. It means a lot. You look smarter than I’ve ever seen you. Mr Chamberlain would laugh to see you now like this, dolled up to the nines. Last time he saw you all you were the Dust Devils, up to your nuts in scrapping. And that was one hell of a scrap. I ain’t seen many days like them ones. Not even the Iraq invasion. I know this ain’t very profound, but I take comfort from knowing he was surrounded by us when he was taken. That’s a proper soldier’s death.

‘I wish we weren’t here, fellas. But since we are, I want you to sing your hearts out when you get in there. Raise that roof. Mr Chamberlain would want it that way. I’ve known a lot of guys die in my time. Most of you lot think I’ve been in uniform since the Crucifixion. Well it ain’t quite like that, but I’ve seen a bit over the years. And I ain’t seen many officers like Mr Chamberlain. So let’s do him proud. Right, fall out.’

They turned to their right, marched three paces and then in a gaggle filed around to the front of the church and went in to take their seats.

The inside of the church was cool. In the front row was Constance. On one side of her was Sam, on the other Trueman. Trueman’s wife was also in the church with their daughters, a few rows back. Just behind Constance sat the officers, Will with them. A Mentioned in Dispatches oak leaf gleamed on his Afghan medal ribbon; he had just been awarded it for his actions the previous summer in PB Mazeer. In the middle, in front of the altar, was the coffin. It was shrouded in a Union flag and had a simple bouquet of daffodils on it next to his Afghan medal, which had been inscribed ‘25186816 Lt TLR Chamberlain KD’. The coffin was weighed down with bags of sand to make it feel like there was a whole body inside; missing its limbs, his cadaver was far lighter than it should have been.

A quiet, nervous chatter filled the church as the last mourners arrived. Just as the padre, who was officiating with the local vicar, was about to shut the door he saw a taxi pull up at the gates to the churchyard, a girl jump out of it and in high heels run awkwardly up the path. She was wearing a simple black dress, with a long black woollen shawl and a black hat. The padre smiled a greeting and everyone watched her as she walked in.

Cassie was mortified to see there was only one space, almost at the front. A soldier with gold teeth and a completely bald head shuffled along to make room for her, and she sat next to him. She glanced around her, the doors now finally shut and a hush settling on the congregation as the service spiralled towards its start. She looked to Constance in the front row, who stared forward from behind her veil, stony-faced. She was watching the coffin and didn’t seem able to take her eyes off it. And then she looked back and caught Cassie’s eye. Cassie didn’t know what to do, but Constance’s face lit up and sparkled a smile at her. Cassie started to cry.

The service began. They sang ‘Abide With Me’ but Cassie wasn’t able to manage any of it. The man next to her, who introduced himself as Adrian Brennan, let her hold his arm. Halfway through the service a good-looking, dapper officer went up to give the eulogy. She wondered who he might be.

Frenchie climbed the stairs of the pulpit and looked out over the congregation. He was almost directly above the coffin, and Tom’s medal caught his eye and fixed him for a moment so that he had to catch his breath. He looked down at Constance, smiled weakly and nodded. He began.

‘Good morning. My name is Chris Du Boulay or, as Tom would have called me, Frenchie. I was Tom’s boss in the army. There are many things that one has to face up to doing as a soldier, but saying goodbye to your friends is definitely the hardest. It is the price you pay for an extraordinary privilege. You get to work with the finest people, and get to know them in a few short weeks and months better than people you have known for years, and you get to share with them in discovering life at its most fun, at its most savage, at its gentlest and at its most awful. I was able to know Tom for only one short year of his short life, but feel that in that year I came to be rewarded by an extraordinary proximity to the best officer I ever worked with and one of the finest men I have ever met.

‘He was a model soldier, Tom. His soldiers loved him, and when I say loved I do not mean he was merely popular; I mean that they showed him a reverence that bordered on the religious. He never saw it – he was far too modest – but I saw it from the very start. The men who make up his beloved 3 Troop are a closed, fiercely tribal group of soldiers who it is almost impossible to break into, and yet I lost count of the number of times they came up to me and praised their leader behind his back. The most telling point, I think, came in the darkest days of Afghanistan, just a day before his death. In
the middle of a firefight I was talking to Lance Corporal Gatunakanivu and I asked him how he was doing. By that point we were two days into a very hard and fierce battle. Lance Corporal Gatunakanivu just looked at me as though I was mad, and said, “Why do I need to worry, boss? We have Mr Chamberlain. He gets us through everything.” His soldiers loved him. And he loved them.

‘But Tom must be allowed to speak for himself. There is little I can say that will augment the image you already have of him. A lot of you will not have known him in a military context at all. A lot will have shared schooldays with him, or holidays, or university days. A lot of you will simply not really know where you know him from; just that you do know him and you liked him and you wanted to come and honour his memory and say thank you to him for lightening up our lives.’

He took a piece of paper from his pocket. His fingers trembled, but as he smoothed out the folds of the letter he grew calmer. ‘Constance, Tom’s mother, wants me to read something to you. It is a letter that Tom wrote to her the evening before he was killed. It arrived at Tom’s home ten days later. I have it here, and Constance has said I should read it out to you. It is all Tom’s voice, and I will only add to it that this letter sums my friend up so much better than any words I could ever say. So I will just let him speak.’

Objective Round House (Basically a run-down compound, neither round, nor indeed much of a house if we’re honest.)

Dear Mum,

This will get home after me, knowing how slow the post is, but I want to write now just to capture this one moment. It’s a really good one and I thought that a letter would do it justice.

Ever since we got back from leave it’s been pretty busy, and we’re now two days into this operation up in the north of Loy Kabir. We started it at dawn yesterday, and it’s been quite a lick. We’ve done a mile and a half and have got one mile to go tomorrow. It’s been a long grind, without any sleep at all, but we’re having a lull at the moment in a compound before we head off tomorrow to complete the mission. It’s dusk and yet again we have an absolutely beautiful sunset. Spring is well under way and the evenings are getting warm again. I’m writing this in a T-shirt, which would have been madness a few weeks ago. The air is getting thicker and you can smell the blossom and flowers among the dust.

The wagons are parked up, and there’s not really much to do. I’m watching the boys conducting a left-handed throwing competition. The rules are fairly basic: all you have to do is throw a rock as far as you can with your left hand. Clue’s in the name, I suppose. Every time they play it I am in hysterics. I’m watching them now. They are squabbling, arguing, always with a smile or grin while doing so. They are the best of friends, and it has been my great fortune to have been accepted into their tight-knit gang. They are from all over the place, all ages, sharing neither background nor future, just the present. At the moment Jessie is chasing GV around and throwing stones at him for mocking his northern accent. Two guys who had not the slightest thing in common, from opposite sides of the globe, now like brothers who have known each other for years. And that is the really strange thing. You know I’ve never minded being an only child, and I don’t, I really don’t. I have always just enjoyed it being you and me, with Dad watching over us, as our little gang. But now I’m with these guys, it has been like giving me the chance to have brothers, for a tiny, finite, six-month period. And in a few weeks it will all be over and we’ll be split up again. After the medals parade we’ll go on leave, come back and then immediately move on to different jobs, and we’ll never be together as a troop ever again. We’ll see each other obviously, but never
in this simple group of twelve. And so I know it’s not going to last, but it’s still wonderful, this little family we have fostered over the tour. In a kind of alternate reality way, this has become another kind of home. The padre said something about that back at Christmas, and now I know what he meant. I used to think out here that I’d never been so far from home in my life, but now I realize that I never really left it.

And while I’m on my soapbox, I think, looking at the lads now, I might have come to a tiny, tiny, bit of a firm idea about the whole question of what we’re doing here. I think it is what I think, anyway. Here goes.

This war out here has cost huge, huge sums, in treasure and blood. We’ve spent a lot, we’ve lost a lot, we no doubt appear – and probably are – arrogant beyond belief in the way we have assumed we can step in, from our rock in the North Atlantic, and teach these guys how to run themselves better. I cannot argue with that. But, but, but, and this is a big but, one that studying the lads over the past months has helped me to reach, there is one argument, however illogical, in our favour.

You just have to bring the whole thing down to a street and liken Britain to a bloke, a perfectly normal bloke, walking down it. He’s a bit rough, he’s a bit cocky, but essentially he’s a decent guy. Across the street he sees a little old lady getting mugged. Despite himself and against all logic, the man runs across the road (probably getting knocked down by a car while doing so) to help her. And when he gets there, the muggers start beating him up. After five minutes the fight breaks up, and he leaves it bloody and bruised. The granny is more or less OK, and probably doesn’t even say so much as thank you (in fact she most likely whacks him over the head with the handbag he’s saved for her). He crosses the road again and carries on down it.

The point is that, despite losing his own wallet, getting a black eye, a broken nose and some cracked ribs, the man would do
exactly the same thing the next time he saw it happening. And that is how to see Britain in all this. The kind of mug who sees another country in trouble and while probably completely misunderstanding or misreading the situation (Oh dear, Iraq) or underestimating the effort needed (Step forward, Afghanistan) nevertheless steps up and goes to help. This is the kind of mindset the lads have. They swear, they fight, they’re not necessarily saints, but when it comes to it, they step forward every time. That is why I am so proud to know them.

And that character they have is exactly the same character that Britain as a whole has. When someone else is in trouble, no matter what the cost, we’ll end up rolling up our sleeves and going to help out. And, and this I do know for sure, I’d be a citizen of a country like that a hundred times out of a hundred.

Well. There you go. Show this to me when I get home and I will probably laugh and deny I wrote any of it!

It’s getting dark now, and I can’t really see to write.

Only five more days on the ground and then we start getting ready to go back to Bastion to hand over to the lucky, lucky lads taking over. I never thought I’d say this, but a little bit of me is going to miss it out here. But I’m looking forward to coming home more than I could ever miss this place. I am so, so excited about the end of tour.

With all love, and don’t worry – nearly there.

Tom x