Chapter Four

WAR and POETRY

The captain seems very insistent that I know and write about his background: not the posh boy stuff but the ideas and beliefs that have bought him to this place where he will soon put his life on the line for his platoon. I have always thought of him as a sensitive and educated man.

Molly would probably prefer that I get on with it. She is not that good at waiting out. She is brave beyond belief and commands a great deal of respect from a surprising array of people, some unexpected. The next part of this story is hers.

"Under Fives" was the perfect name for this lot, he mused. Captain James recalled singing "Wheels on the Bus" with four year old Sam on a trip to London three years ago and the "Are we there yet?" question was an inevitable part of any family trip longer than fifteen minutes. Like these soldiers, Sam was not a patient traveller. Come to think of it, neither was he himself even when he had to be a careful family man driving the local kids to the rugby field or taking his mother shopping at the markets. Driving fast on the open road was one of his guilty pleasures. Sam always urged him to go faster, but only when his mother wasn't in the car. His son had probably inherited the daredevil gene from him. Time would tell but he was pretty confident he was right. Scamp loved speed.

What the captain had in common with these youngsters in 2 Section were his need for excitement and low tolerance for sitting still for any length of time. As the boys sang the 'Wheels" ditty he made himself sit still, letting his mind wander back to his school days and to Mr Martin, who had taught him English Literature in his senior year. What a magical teacher he had been! That was the year when James had fallen in love with poetry, both reading it avidly and writing his own.

Discovering the joy of playing with words, of crystallising his ideas and emotions into spare and succinct lines and images, he had begun keeping a journal of his own poetry as well as collecting works of other poets who had caught his attention. Even now he carried a small notebook to record impressions and ideas which he would often spend lonely evenings in Afghanistan wrestling into shapes which pleased him and creating a personal record of his life and feelings in this strange and challenging land. He realised this discipline was a counter strategy to tame his restlessness, to tempt his busy imagination into some moments of peacefulness.

Smiling to himself as he gazed out of the back window of the Mastiff, he wondered what the boys and the only girl, of course, in 2 Section would think if they knew they had a poet in their midst. Taking the piss would just be a start. They might think he had gone soft in the head. It was unlikely that many of them knew much about the heritage of poetry created by British soldiers in World War One to encapsulate their wartime experiences and to give form to the maelstrom of emotions which so frequently accompanied active service. "In Flanders Field" was part of every soldier's training and experience of ceremonial occasions, of course. Coupled with white crosses in military cemeteries, the Canadian soldier's poem never failed to underline for him the reality of the red poppies amongst the myriad war dead in Europe and the ever present risk to all of them of being killed.

With a start, he chided himself for his arrogance. What did he know really about the inner lives of his troops? Perhaps they too had private creative strategies similar to his. He had seen Fingers with paper and pencil, sitting quietly and looking as if he were drawing. When the captain had commented, Fingers had spirited the paper away, refusing to answer enquiries about what he was doing. Brains was another case altogether. James had recognised the private's quick intellect very early on in the piece. He had wondered what flukes of birth and childhood had led to the smart young private having a less than stellar schooling history. Had he been given the advantages of the captain's background, he believed that Brains might very well have been to Sandhurst and be his superior officer rather than the other way around.

Mr Martin's class had studied the World War 1 poets, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in particular. Their impassioned lines about the falsehoods used to lure a generation of young men to war, many of them to their deaths, still stirred Captain James' blood and his anger. Probably Owens' famous "Dulce et Decorum Est", studied by generations of students since it was written in late 1917 only a few months before his death in the trenches, best summed up the helpless rage of those lost boys and their resignation to their fate. The captain could still recall the most poignant of those lines, challenging the terrible deception to which those long ago soldiers had been subjected:

"You would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum Est

Pro patria mori.

Of course it was not sweet and fitting to die for one's country. Mr Martin, with his passion for truth and belief in the young men in his class, had challenged them to question the "old Lie" and to change it.

From that point on, the young James had decided he would become become an officer in the Army. He would become a leader of men, challenging those under his command to be peace keepers, to avoid killing unless in extremity, to take care of one another in the comradeship that evolves in the stress of armed conflict. He had been very glad eventually to have been assigned the "Under Fives" to whip into shape and turn into soldiers capable of serving safely. They had survived so far, not like the last tour during which Geraint Smith had been shot by a sniper. Getting them through this tour of duty and home in one piece had been his task. This time he had almost completed the mission. The only mishap had been Smurf's shooting in the groin and that had been totally due to his own fucking stupidity.

What might seem to others to be a contradiction in terms, had they known his motivation for becoming a soldier and an officer, made perfect sense to him. As well as teaching the class about the English war poets, Mr Martin had introduced them to a masterwork, from the "other" side. Erich Maria Remarque recounted the story of a whole class of German boys, about the same age as the class he had been in, who were subjected to the same "old Lie" and cajoled to sign up en masse by their teacher. Their suffering, just as terrible as that of the Allies, was made less devastating by an officer older than them, battle hardened, cynical, a tough and uncompromising leader who taught them everything he knew about staying alive. Captain James recalled the tragedy of the German narrator of the story, killed by a sniper on a day when it was "All Quiet on the Western Front". The book had a profound effect on him and underpinned the growing belief he had that pretty much everything in the world was, luck, chance, a fluke. Had he been born German at that time he knew without a doubt he would have been just as capable of leading that platoon as this British one, in Afghanistan, one hundred years later.

His belief that people are where, who and what they are through chance had amplified his admiration of Molly's professionalism and compassion in treating a seriously injured Afghani insurgent. By this stage of their tour her dedication to her job, skill at treating wounds and her exceptional courage were evident to them all. She was clearly one feisty and talented person who had no hesitation in going above and beyond what was expected of her. Molly Dawes was being noticed in high places in the military.

Qaseem, observant and perceptive student of people and also teacher of English Literature, had not been familiar with the War Poets until Captain James had loaned him a slim volume of their collected works. Away from the Under Five men and Molly at night, the two of them had discussed the poetry and found common ground in their reasons for serving in the military. Both were driven, at least in part, by a wish to foster peace, both were concerned about protecting and strengthening the young people with them, both admired Molly. Hesitantly, the captain hinted that his feelings towards her were becoming something rather different from professional admiration. Qaseem smiled gently and commenting that he had noticed already, suggested that James should be very circumspect around the soldiers, Kinders in particular. The Corporal was not known for his perceptiveness or discretion or ability to hold his tongue. Qaseem felt a fatherly regard for Molly who reminded him of his daughter killed in a bomb blast eight years before. His grief for his daughter and her mother was without end but Molly had brought some joy back into his life with her Cockney slang and laboured attempts to learn some Pashto, Qaseem's native tongue.

-OG-

Molly was a tight bundle of misery. Their mission to get all the children to school seemed a total failure, for which Captain James had made a feeble excuse. She was feeling overlooked and as if she had been sent to the margins of the whole bloody mess. It was like the bossman was just copping out, again!

Being a woman in this bloody country was so isolating. The role of medic was solitary to start with. Being "beside the captain one hundred percent" was a joke. Nude Nut and co had embarrassed her with their sexual stuff about her and Smurf and as for Smurf himself, she felt like killing him. Most of all, just what was going on with the captain? What was that lingering look before they got on board the Mastiff really about? Was he remembering all the mornings they had met in the FOB before anyone else was awake? The boys were driving her crazy with their boring, tuneless round and round shit song and she badly wanted Smurf to shut his mouth, just for thirty seconds would help. Molly realised her thoughts and feelings were all jumbled up and there was nothing she could do about it in the middle of this bunch of overgrown babies. All she could do was wait. Hopefully she could sort herself out once they arrived at Bastion and she got out of this bloody tin can.

-OG-

Brakes shrieked, the mastiff pulled up hard and a couple of the boys who had been sitting on the edge of the bench seats were tipped forward almost landing on the floor. Colourful obscenities amid cries of "Whoa! Whoa!" followed, but all of them shut up when Smurf started talking again. This time he reported in a measured and professional manner,

"Sheet, pinned down by rocks, looks like there could be a body underneath. Blood all over the sheet. Probably booby trapped."

All the captain's leadership training and his on tour experience kicked in as he made rapid decisions about how to proceed. Later, when he reviewed the events of the day and was writing the required Incident Report for the major in Bastion, he would understand that two factors influenced his decision to investigate the white sheet in the road himself. He would not, of course, be including much of this in the report.

It had, up till that point, been Dangles' designated job to check bodies for booby trapping and the captain's to stand back and give orders. Now that he was so close to bringing all of 2 Section safely back to Bastion and, shortly, home to Brize Norton, he was not willing to risk any one of their young lives any further. It was still his duty to bring them home in one piece and if that meant risking his own life, well then he was willing to do so. Never did he want again to see the look in a mother's eyes that he had at Geraint's funeral.

"I'm ready, Boss," was her immediate message to him. Molly had told him weeks ago that she was one hundred percent by his side. Her response was instant and professional. She was on task immediately and was letting him know. Molly did not even consider any risk to herself.

Her bravery and ability to act immediately had been tested and proven several times already on tour: Captain James deliberately put to one side his personal feelings for her. Out of the whole section she was the soldier with the most skill, capacity for instantaneous response and raw courage. Of course he wanted her nearby if he was going to carry out this dangerous investigation. But he didn't want her close enough that she was as likely to be hurt as he was should the whole thing go tits up. Telling the rest of the soldiers to provide back up and Smurf to continue covering them with the turret gun, he turned to Molly and, grim faced, told her to come with him.

I know, I know I should just get on with it. We all find out later, in the trench, how much goes through the captain's mind in the course of a thunderclap. A mastiff trip allows even more time for reflection.

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