After their passing-out parade, they had a couple of days to
say their goodbyes and ready themselves for the adventures ahead. Bertie told
his sister to start knitting socks when he discovered he was being sent to the fields
of Flanders. Arthur stocked up on baccy and German swear words, while Steve took
a crash course in cursing en Español.
Meanwhile, Gavin loaded more tracks onto his iPod and scrolled through miles of
desert on Google Earth. Of the five, only Sam had no idea how to prepare for
his posting. He was scheduled to stay behind in Catterick to play five-a-side
football.
At first he thought it was a joke. But ten hours of footie
day after day soon loses its funny side. He wondered if he’d been kept back with
the wheezers and dickheads, the kind of lad you’d prefer to have fielding for
the enemy, but no. Some of these stay-behinders were medal-winning athletes.
Some of them had university degrees.
Sam used to enjoy kicking a ball around, but this was no
game. The officers set up the tournaments as if the men’s lives depended on the
outcome. Yet there was never any pride in winning, only the shame of losing and
the gut-curdling punishment of cleaning out the latrines.
The squaddies felt their dejection all the more keenly whenever
they heard from a former colleague: an ink-blotted letter from Bertie with half
the words blacked out or a YouTube clip of Gavin with a towel round his head, pretending
to be Lawrence of Arabia. Their mothers were grateful that no-one was pointing a
gun at them on the playing fields of Catterick, but that was no consolation. Sam
and the rest had joined up in a spirit of bravado and self-sacrifice. Soccer
stars weren’t their kind of heroes; not even David Beckham.
Tension rippled through the camp when they were shown a copy
of The Times with a eulogy for Bertie,
describing him scrambling out of his trench and plodding through a muddy no
man’s land, heedless of the enemy fire. They hurled their popcorn at the cinema
screen as Pathe News sombrely announced Arthur’s final mission over Dresden. Their
cursing drowned out the voice of the newscaster accompanying the footage of
Steve in his dugout at Goose Green. Finally, after Gavin was paraded through
the streets of Wootton Bassett draped in the Union Jack, Sam and the rest of
his team could stomach no more. They refused to spend another minute dribbling
a ball across a field.
The lads were terrified they’d be shot for insubordination. Lucky
for them, the politicos had recently instituted a modernisation programme for
the armed services. It might have been due to the shrinking public purse, or
lawyers shouting about human rights but, underneath it all, was the fact that
computerised weaponry had rendered warfare less labour intensive. Bodies like
Sam’s were surplus to requirements.
A team of management consultants were sent to Catterick. These
suits proposed an away day to analyse the problem from different angles. All
ranks were encouraged to have their say.
Sam was rather chuffed when the facilitator scrawled his
words in capital letters on the flipchart. “You want to be a hero?” she beamed.
“I want you to be a hero, but how are we going to achieve it when we’re running
out of wars?”
Her smile, her confidence in his abilities, soon took his
thoughts away from soldiering. Indeed, the long rambling speeches of the
bigwigs were sending him to sleep. Sam spent the rest of the workshop dreaming
of persuading the facilitator out of her chalk-striped skirt-suit and into his
bunk.
If the mechanics of the solution were ever articulated, he
was unaware of it. All Sam knew was that they were to pack their kit bags and
prepare for an overnight flight.
Strapped into his seat, banter criss-crossing the plane, Sam
was too excited to think about the woman in the chalk-striped skirt-suit.
Bertie and Arthur, Steve and Gavin had all done their patriotic duty. At last
he’d have the chance to do the same.
Dawn was breaking as they landed, a pale light picking out a
cluster of Nissen huts beyond the runway. Bleary eyed, they disembarked and
shouldered their packs.
Across the yards of asphalt, Sam could make out some men
milling about near the huts. Despite their uniforms, they looked too
undisciplined to constitute a welcome party.
As the squadron marched towards them, he realised why the
men appeared so unsoldierly. They couldn’t possibly stand to attention with
bodies so deformed. Some were missing limbs, some disfigured by burns; one
looked as if he’d had half his face blown off and another wore a tin mask over
his, like some alien from Doctor Who. Sam shuddered to think what grotesquery lay
behind it.
Stumbling over his disgust and disappointment, Sam found
himself momentarily out of step. They hadn’t even given him twenty-four hours to
feel like a proper soldier. Now, it seemed, he was to be an orderly at a
military field hospital. He’d do anything to reboard the plane and fly back to
Catterick. To parachute down to the football pitch and start kicking the ball
from end to end.
He wished he could get his hands on that bitch in the
chalk-striped skirt-suit. He’d give her some words for her flipchart all right.
Words with four letters starting with f and c. Yeah, and as soon as they were
up on the chart he’d teach her what they meant. He’d rip off her business suit
and bayonet her f-ing c right up to her throat.
“Get a grip,” hissed the guy behind him.
Sam reddened, wondering if his mouth had betrayed his
thoughts. He composed his features as the troop processed past the casualties towards
the barracks.
They came to a halt at a large dormitory. Instead of the
wooden bunks with rough grey blankets he’d been expecting, they were each
assigned an iron bed with starched white sheets. The order came to put down
their packs and change into pyjamas. Sam was surprised, but the prospect of
mopping up shit and puke would be a lot more bearable after a kip.
A hand on his shoulder shook him awake. Rubbing his eyes, he
propped himself up on the pillows. A figure in a white apron and pleated
headdress, like a matron from a black-and-white movie, shoved a thermometer
under his tongue.
Sam glanced down the line of identical narrow beds, each
with a bemused-looking lad in khaki pyjamas muted by a thermometer. Yet he
could see the sense in giving them all a check-up before foisting them on the
patients. A common cold that a healthy guy would take in his stride could
flatten one of those crips.
A group of white-coats progressed from bed to bed, checking
their notes at each station. Sam couldn’t hear what was said, but he saw the
revulsion pass across each soldier’s face as the contingent moved on. He felt
reassured not to be the only one disturbed by their assignment. It helped him
resign himself somehow. Mucking out in an infirmary wasn’t exactly seeing
action, but he could get a whiff of it through coming close to men who’d drawn
the short straw under enemy fire.
He straightened his back as the doctors neared his bed. He
wondered if he ought to salute, but no-one else had done. He wished the nurse
would come and relieve him of the thermometer. He wanted to give a good
impression of himself.
The white-coats paused at the bed next to his, muttering
between themselves about double amputees. Wide-eyed, the soldier watched them.
Sam turned his head aside when the guy began to cry.
By the time the doctors reached him, Sam was resolved. He’d
wanted to be a nurse even less than he’d wanted to be a footballer but, if that
was what the army required of him, he’d rise to the challenge. He’d mop floors,
empty bedpans, learn to dress suppurating wounds if need be. He’d do it
cheerfully. He’d do it well.
The head honcho barked at him from the end of the bed. “Ah,
so you’re the chap who wants to be a hero?” He didn’t wait for an answer before
dissolving into a huddle of white coats.
Sam grinned as widely as the thermometer in his mouth would
allow. He wasn’t alarmed by their mutterings about grenades, mustard gas and
incendiary bombs. Their voices formed the backing track to his reverie: he’d
earn his stripes for his bravery in caring for the guys who’d crawled through
all that shit and come out the other end.
The doctor cocked his head towards him. “Great job you’re
doing.” It was exactly what his dad had said on the day of the passing-out
parade.
The team moved to the next bed, apart from one woman who
lingered behind. She looked almost too young to be a doctor, too good-looking.
Sam imagined peeling off her white coat to find her pink and naked underneath. In
reality he knew he’d have to take his time getting to know her, but that was
okay. He assumed they’d both be in this place for the duration.
Her smile made his dick tingle as she passed him a clipboard
and pen. “Consent form,” she said. “Sign and date it beside the cross at the
bottom.”
Sam tongued the thermometer to the corner of his mouth. “You’re
not in the army then?”
She inclined her head flirtatiously. “What makes you say
that?”
Sam stole a cursory glance at the printed form. Third-degree burns to torso, amputation above
right knee, removal of left shoulder and lower jaw. “The army issues
orders. It never asks permission.”
She gazed uneasily at her colleagues as they shuffled to the
next bed. “I suppose this is kind of special,” she said.
Sam would’ve liked to have chatted longer, but it wouldn’t
be a great start to their relationship if he got her into trouble for dawdling.
He scratched his name in the space provided. “When can I see you again?”
She seemed to recoil. He hadn’t shaved and he knew he’d have
bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, but he’d always thought he had the kind
of face that pleased the girls. Then she giggled, “Well, I’ll see you in
theatre but of course you won’t see me.”
So they were putting him to work in the operating theatre,
right in the middle of the action. He’d never wanted to be a butcher’s
assistant, but if it meant being closer to her … “Why won’t I see you?”
She looked confused, as if they weren’t speaking the same
language. “You’ll be unconscious. We’re not so barbaric as to operate without
anaesthetic.”
The lad in the next bed had stopped crying and was gawping
at him and shaking his head. Sam crossed his legs under the bed clothes, petrified
he’d piss himself. “What exactly have I signed up for?”
“Oh don’t worry about it,” said the doctor. “Everybody gets cold
feet just before surgery.”
The shambling reception party when they stepped off the
plane: heroism displayed in scars, in burns, in sacrificed limbs. One battle
was as good as another in manufacturing heroes. The public didn’t care how their
injuries were acquired.
Sam’s voice was nothing more than a whimper. “What is this
place?”
His neighbour leaned across from the next bed. He could
hardly stifle his laughter. “It’s where they turn you into a hero, Cretin. Just
like you said you wanted.”
Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Matron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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