soldier — Journalism — In the footsteps of an Itinerant Child

“We don’t blame you.” That was all they said, those two tired dignified eyes staring at me with stoical pity across that blank and faceless table in that blank and faceless room of this blank and faceless hospital. “We don’t blame you.” I don’t know what else I expected to hear. I don’t know what else I wanted to hear. I don’t think there was anything else I needed to hear.

I had sat for a couple of moments facing this brave, slight woman in her early fifties, alone. Some strings of silver laced into her tired brown hair, I wondered if they had been there before all this? We sat there in silence, she spoke the only sentence. We felt no distance, no embarrassment or discomfort in each others company. Once more she played the rock, this time for me. She spoke that sentence, the silence descended again, cradling us and finally…finally I cried.

She had sat with me and watched me and maybe she felt a little less isolated. Maybe I gave a face to all of this, one that was different from any of the officialdom she had faced before. One that was vulnerable and lost. One that could prove her grief was not only a figment of her family’s existence but was tangible in someone else’s world. Maybe she felt reassured, maybe she didn’t.

I cried. I opened and it came flooding out. Afterwards, after the tears had stopped and my chest ached from the exertion. I could feel my scar beneath my shirt, four inches across and almost two deep. I was lucky it didn’t burn to the bones the doctors told me. I looked up with my puffy bloodshot eyes and things felt a little bit different. Things were clearer, better defined, in conception and perception, to me at least, they had changed. It was as though the tears had helped to wash away some emotional cataract. Nothing had really changed, nothing could be changed, a will always be a, but it felt a little clearer. It felt like a step forward. A step away.

As I stood, that last afternoon in the hospital, starring blankly out of my window towards the green lawns and grey tarmac, I thought again about those eyes, about what they carried. I compared them to the other set of eyes which had brought us both here. Eyes I’d never seen. The weight of the world was in hers and I wondered what she had left. At least she had her grief, what did I have? I noticed absent mindedly that my hand was at my chest. I looked down at the deep purple of the charred flesh, my flesh, and thought I felt it tingle, begin to sting. I put the thought from my mind. I didn’t want to feel it, didn’t want to feel it ever again but it would always be there. That is what I have; my scar.

It was to be my first official duty after completing basic training. I was nineteen years old, it was the summer of 1979 and I was to drive a lorry load of excess supplies and one excess Sergeant to Belfast Barracks. The barracks were less than fifteen miles from the docks, it would take no time at all, that’s what the Sergeant told me.

“We’ll be in and out in a few hours lad, don’t worry.” But I worried. “It’s a bloody nasty place, they’ll hate you because of nothing more than your accent and your uniform. They don’t care about who you are, they’ll just hate you. Women, men, kids. We’ll have no problems though lad, twenty minutes on the road, an hour unloading and then straight back to the ferry and off that bloody island. That bloody Ireland, you get it lad? No? Don’t worry lad, you’ll be the star of the mess tonight.”

As I slapped a clip of rubber bullets into my weapon, huddled on the road by the curb and the destroyed wheel of the three tonne lorry. Holding the Sergeant in my lap as he bled slowly and breathed slower wondering where the next bullet would come from I realised that those words had been as much to comfort him as they had been to comfort me.

We had disembarked the ferry at Belfast docks without incident. We received a message that our escort of an armoured land rover had been delayed due to mechanical problems and had still not set off to meet us. We were an unscheduled transport of a single truck carrying only forty boxes of blankets and cutlery down one road for fifteen miles. The area had been silent for days previous and we decided we could make the short trip quickly and before our presence was known. We set off down a road I will never forget. A name which will always lie heavy on my mind at it’s every utterance. One that will burn behind my brow like brewing tears. Kilvackey Road.

The mood in our cab was fairly light hearted, at least from the Sergeant’s side, it was a bright sunny lunchtime and though I was still afraid, more deeply nervous than afraid, I was starting to believe the Sergeant that we may be back in England by teatime.

We drove past bungalows and pubs, a small corner shop and a group of kids playing football. Each face we passed paused and turned towards us. They starred, starred right into my eyes with jaws set and lids narrowed and gave me a look and a sense like I have never received before and never hope to again. I swallowed the lump in my throat and gripped the steering wheel tightly with shaking, sweating hands. The mood in the cab had changed.

Four and a half minutes into my first duty in an active and operational theatre, driving along that empty afternoon road we approached a low rise block of flats and a second group of loitering youths a noise rang out. An indefinite sound to my ears. I didn’t recognise it at first, I didn’t have time to. The lorry jerked violently like a horse trying to bolt and throw its rider, leaping up from the road and throwing back its head, canvass mane curling in the air. It hit the tarmac again and lurched wildly to the left and I stamped on the brakes moments before crashing into the pruned roses of a suburban front garden.

The Sergeant looked at me about to speak. I wanted him to say something, anything, something benign. “Damned awful time for a puncture.” Or. “Did you not see that brick in the road lad, be a bit more careful will you?”

He didn’t get an opportunity to speak, to say anything. I don’t think I heard the sound though I probably did. The passenger side of the windscreen exploded. Drops of laminated glass scattering and leaping like escaping diamonds. Not all diamonds, some were rubies. Like a fool I covered my eyes.

I opened them almost instantly, training overriding natural instincts. The Sergeant was pale and sweating, his right hand held to his neck. The windscreen had been pierced too, either on exit or another entry I hadn’t noticed, and on what remained the sun shone through a spray of crimson casting a red shadow across us both in macabre illumination.

I leaned over him, throwing open the door and scrambling over him. I was speaking though I still can not remember what I was saying. I rolled him up and onto me as I dropped out of the door and onto the pavement besides the garden wall hoping the bulk of the great green steel truck would afford us some protection. I remember my eyes scanning my surroundings for some sign of danger, something to be suspicious of, something tangible to fear but everything was so normal and everyday. Houses, curtains in front rooms and bedrooms, gardens with flowers and shrubberies. Where were the charging, ski mask clad men in black I was trained to face? To aim at and fight? Such an imaging had filled me with fear throughout the months of my training and the weeks of waiting that followed but now, surrounded by suburban pleasantries, they were infinitely more preferable to this no-mans land of normality.

Another shot came, every cell in my body flinched in anticipation of the impact but I didn’t stop moving. I had to get to cover, get the Sergeant to cover. The impact came, not as I’d expected to me, though I felt its reverberations. The Sergeant let out a heavy breath and with it I realised he had been hit again. It felt surreal, he didn’t shout or scream, writhe or cry. He just gave this great heavy sigh and I held him tighter as the camouflage of his trouser leg grew darker beneath the knee.

We sat huddled on the ground, I prayed we were out of the gun sight though the shot had proved that we weren’t. For all I knew we could have rolled right into it though in hindsight I was a fool to think they wouldn’t just move if they lost their shot. I sat shaking on the warm concrete of a suburban street, cold sweat on pallid skin, on a sunny afternoon hiding from a sniper who could be anywhere. Invisible.

I smacked a clip of rubber bullets into my weapon with the heel of my hand, though I hadn’t fired a single shot from the one I removed, and felt a moments guilt for wishing they were real ones as I clutched it closely to me as the Sergeant lay in my lap, his breath coming in slow deliberate heavy gasps. I wondered if he had been wounded before? How long had he been in the army? Had he been to war before? Were we at war now? But most of all I wanted to ask him; what do I do now?

We sat for agonising minutes waiting for the next bullet. The next hollow crack of a distant rifle. The jack was just beside my right shoulder in the passenger side foot well. Training tells you to grab it, change the wheel and get the hell out of danger. Easier said than done with a wounded man in your arms, and death nearby, all while you clutch your rifle which isn’t even filled with real bullets, in fragile cover next to someone’s prize roses.

We sat for more agonising minutes. I realise now that I was frozen. I couldn’t have moved if I tried. I was shaking, petrified, hunted, cornered, a panicking child playing at being a man in a game he now realised he never knew the rules of, listening to the laboured breaths of a man who I had met only hours earlier. The first ten minutes of active duty.

Crash! The sound of one of the trucks headlights shattering, tiny fragments of glass and mirror dancing on the road. I tightened, tensed, felt like I shrank. Another noise, a hollow clang of denting metal. Voices. Laughter. Suddenly I realised these weren’t bullets. Dung! I peered cautiously beneath the door to see half a red brick dropping to the concrete after hitting the radiator grill. I could see feet too.

Small trainer clad feet. For a second relief rushed over me. Up and through me. I wanted to stand up, call them over. Get help, go home. Smash! I was showered with glass again. A brick had come through the passenger door window. They were trying to hit me with them! They were laughing! Kids!

I couldn’t comprehend the situation. The Sergeant just kept breathing in his slow, deep deliberate way. Meditative almost in its rhythm. I shuffled him round and half propped him against, half tucked him under the steps of the truck. I peered around again for another look. They were gathered around something.

Why hadn’t anyone done anything? Why were there no sirens? I looked at the house, at the windows. Did the curtain move? What are the kids doing? Moving, excited. Where were their parents? Did they not know we were hurt down here? Did they know we were here? Should I call out to them?

One began walking forwards. He had seen me. I clutched my rifle. Rubber bullets can still kill you if they hit you in the right place. Even if they don’t they still pack an incredible punch. Just a bullet that doesn’t break the skin.

He had something in his hand. How do you shoot a child? Why would you need to? “You fucking English bastards!” He shouted. And he let it fly, a small glass bottle with a rag in the top. My stomach lurched. I wanted to run but I was frozen. I wanted to scream but my mouth and throat had dried to sand paper. I wanted to shut my eyes but I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to burn.

The bottle hit the ground with a slight plink and skidded across the concrete. My jaw dropped, it hadn’t smashed, it hadn’t exploded. Two feet away from me and it had simply skidded to a harmless halt. I was exalted by this reprieve and scurried forwards. I grabbed the bottle, square and sturdy and threw it away, I had to get it away, I had got a chance to save us both before it cracked or the flames on the short rag crept inside its neck.

It was at this moment, exposed but saved. There was a soundless thunder strike. Whiteness everywhere. Rushing noises filled my ears like I was under the waves of a stormy sea. I stumbled back dropping my rifle. Clawing at my chest. Something was coming away beneath my fingers. Something was trying to burrow into my chest I could feel it.

I was unaware of the other noise building behind the rush, my ears still ringing, my eyes still filled with white. The shouts and voices. Lots of voices. There was another rush. Freezing, choking this time. Blowing the things from my chest and filling my nose and mouth suffocating stenches and chemicals. I felt my body heave and wretch. I passed out.

I came round a week later in a different world. A world of white linen and crisp folds. A world of women with gentle faces and sad smiles. On the second day they told me a man was there to see me they propped up my pillows and told me to wait for him. Where was I going to go? I didn’t even really know where I was.

He arrived dressed in khaki with his hat beneath his arm. His moustache made him seen like he’d stepped from an old war movie but there was to be no, ‘what what old chap?’

He told me what had happened with a deliberateness which served to tell me that he wasn’t going to repeat himself. I had been hit by a phosphorus bomb. The kids had been a diversion set to draw me out less a get a shot off at my, suspected, lone attacker. The sergeant had survived and was recovering well.

I would be scarred for life and was to be discharged from the army upon my leaving the hospital. The petrol bomb I had thrown away had hit one of the kids. Burnt him on the pavement outside of his home. He had died two days ago in the intensive care unit of the same hospital I was in. It had been a major incident but they were succeeding in playing it down, keeping it quiet.

As he opened the door to leave he paused and turned back towards me. The boy’s family wanted to see me, well the mother at least, to talk to me when I was well enough. It wouldn’t be more than a couple of days, he said, apparently I was healing well.