Chapter One
Long grass tickled my cheek as I laid back and shut my eyes for a moment, before breathing heavily through my nose and opening them again to resume my quiet vigil. In the semi darkness I could sense rather than see the shapes of my patrol all around me. Impaired by that darkness I could only just make out the muted shine of the clouded moon off their rifle muzzles, and gently moving silhouettes as they moved jerkily in the fog of sleep. My other senses felt sharpened by the effects of the night robbing me of my sight, however, and I could hear the gentle hushing of slow, rhythmic breathing, the rustle of a cool breeze through the grass and trees and distant cracks as shots were exchanged across the far off hills. I could smell the musky odour of my soldiers, after a long day on the move with little time to rest, carried across to me on the air. Reaching up to brush the grass from my face my fingers grazed rough stubble and I reflected ruefully on how much I missed the simple creature comforts of hot water and a sharp razor.
It had been a long six months since we had been deployed and been transported so far away from our homes. I had but to close my eyes once more and, in my mind, I could still see the face of the girl I loved smiling with a faint sadness and pride, her fingers pressed like welts against the glass of the bus window and her green eyes shining slightly with repressed tears. As the bus had pulled out the camp I had rested back and closed my eyes like I had now and sighed, a long, slow exhalation of breath, a preparation, making mentally ready. I opened my eyes again now and stared up at the sky as a passing break in the dark clouds revealed distant pin pricks of light-unfamilar shapes of stars that weren't mine. There had been so much unfamiliarity as we had moved through this strange land fighting a war we hadnt asked for against people we did not know. I felt I had aged a decade in less than half a year.
I had joined the army as a young man, so much younger than I was now, not merely phsyically but mentally and emotionally. The toys of my boyhood had told me that being a soldier was a game of heroes, war a theatre upon which plays were spun out with, somehow, everyone returning home safe and whole with tales of bravery and honour. Ridiculous, and yet I had grown up on such tales, the stories of my fathers fathers imbued with the romanticism that only comes with the cloud of years. Throughout my years of school I had been that archetypal boy everybody sought to be. Excelling at sports I had won honours in every competition I participated in and I had tempered my muscular physique with a keen intellect. To most people's surprise I could race through a book of prose as fast as I could sprint across a sports field and I knew it. I carried myself like a king amongst lesser men back then. I smiled to myself now in the semi darkness at my teenage smugness. I suppose only a good unbringing had taught me a gregariousness and generosity that tempered my adolescent swagger. Still, I was only human. Much to my mother's chagrin and my fathers concealed pride I had never been short of female attention and had never been shy at capitalising upon it.
Eventually I left school with a pocket full of qualifications, a cadre of friends who promised we would be such forever-whatever that means when you are eighteen-and the options to go anywhere I chose. I think it was fair to say I caught everybody off guard when I then chose to announce I was going to join the army. My parents were proud but wary. A long family tradition of military people meant they knew so much better than I did exactly what that choice entailed and tried valiantly to prepare me but I was too caught up in my own glory. I was going to be the hero. I was so young.
Lying here in the murk of night's dead time now that seemed a far off period of my life. I had endured the rigourous breaking in of basic training as they disassembled us piece by systematic piece through hard work, physical exhaustion and unbending discipline to build us up in the mold they wanted. It had been hard and I had worked for every moment of it. However, I had run and played sports from a young age and was physically ready for the challenges that lay ahead and growing up in a family of military men I was used to the authoritarian concepts of discipline being thrust upon me now and it felt familiar rather than coercive. I quickly cottoned on that by not fighting this new way of life, but embracing it I bent like a branch in the wind with it rather than breaking down trying to push against it. Eventually that way of life had become so ingrained in me I knew nothing else and I became a leader of sorts amongst our small group of painfully raw recruits. Finally I was showing some signs of growing up. I began to find it did not matter to me so much anymore to be the best I could be at the expense of others. I do not think I would ever lose my fiercely competitive streak but it had become tempered somewhat with the knowledge that by helping my new friends to become the best they could be would help me in turn better myself.
We had been thrown together by the vagaries of fate. You were assigned a bed and a locker and the man next to you and above you the same. There was no rhyme or reason to the people you met other than names on a list.I could still bring those bunks around me to mind now, the coarse scratchiness of the dark green blankets, almost grainy, rough under your fingertips like ripples on sand, stretched tightly across a blazing white sheet. The sheets themselves were shined smooth in places from years of handling, that sweep of the palm across cool soft cotton, tightening a corner here or a seam there for absolute perfection. The bunks were a flat grey steel, chipped in places, darkened patches of reddish brown like islands in a murky sea. The metal was always cold even in the height of midday warmth when we came in, the moisture irritating between our shoulder blades, to change our sodden t-shirts before we ate. Leaning on them for a moment to catch our breaths and exchange a few bantering words with our bunkmates was a short but sweet pleasure. Lying in the darkened room as I laid in the grass now, then running my hands across the brushy softness of my shaven scalp and trying to get used to the feeling after years of long blond hair, you would hear creaking of metal on metal as dreaming bodies shifted, fabric whispering as sheets, pulled loose from their tidy moorings, wrapped themselves around legs like errant ropes and the occasional incoherent mumble as someone's dreams would spill over into our shared room. I could make out the smell of the man above me or beside me as I breathed in and out slowly, the sprays he would wear on his body or the gel in his hair, very different from the comforting smells that made me recall my home but somehow in time becoming as familiar to me as the sweet fruity smell of my mothers perfume that would float past as she moved around the house or my fathers shaving soap still bubbled and damp on the bathroom ledge. In time I came to know these men I shared this small room with as well as I knew my own family. We became brothers of a sort, bonds forged by our shared experiences and a need to have someone close to us when all the family we had spent our young lives knowing unconditional love and protection from had been ripped asunder from us for the time being.
"Dan?" A muffled whisper and I was back in the grass again, my water bottle digging uncomfortably into the back of my neck, "Danny? Dya need a break Sarge?" Turning my head to the right I could make out the shape of my Corporal and closest friend Seth Greenway, his large bulk blocking out what little light came from the moon, and the whites of his eyes vivid in the blackness. His voice, surprisingly soft and gentle for a big man came from slightly above me as he sat rotating his ankles and shoulders trying to chase away the last of sleep's heaviness from them. "I'm not sleeping Seth, just thinking." I murmured " Remembering the barrack room at basic. Funny where your mind takes you eh?" He snorted, a sharp exhalation of amusement. "Ain't that the truth? Damn we were kids then." I nodded, "Aye that we were Seth. Anyway since you are up now you can take over, Im gonna try and get some shut eye. Not long left and we will have to move before it gets too light."
