“Okay, settle down now. He may look comical, but he’s anything but. He bribed the army some weeks ago, and took control of most of the country. He sent the tanks into the capital last night. Latest estimates put the death toll in the thousands. The President is dead. The cabinet have either been murdered or defected to the rebels. This is serious. Novistranos has a capable army, with around 150,000 professional soldiers, and an unspecified number of reserves. NATO says we need to act fast. The Prime Minister makes a statement this afternoon. Prep for combat. You leave in 6 hours. You were formed as a rapid reaction force. Today, you fulfil that role.”
There was a shocked silence in the barracks. Every man attended to his weapons and kit. They sat on their bunks, writing ‘final letters’, cleaning firearms, assembling combat gear; webbing, body armour, radio sets. They knew that without proper preparation, they were going home in a cheap wooden box.
On the helicopter, George lay on a stretcher, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, unknowing of his weakening pulse and massive blood loss. There were two dressings around what was left of his legs, and a line in his arm. The rotors buzzed like maddened flies, and the medic next to him noted his pulse. George dropped out of the paroxysm of nothing he was in, and lapsed into another flashback.
George Robertson woke up. It was too early. He’d got the sack yesterday from the garage where he worked. He remembered how the boss had said something along the lines of “an irreparable deficit between costs and sales”. George had said to his best friend Mark about how the boss quite possibly had a deficit between his mouth and brain. George had liked his job at the garage- he liked working with machines and going down the local afterwards with his mates. Out of all the jobs in Sheffield, all thirty of ‘em, thought George, that had to be the best one. He had thought about going down the Job Centre, but what would they have for a lad with 5 GCSEs in Sheffield? The steel industry had packed up about twenty years ago, and no office would take him with his qualifications. Damn. Sheffield can offer me no more, he thought aloud. He needed a job where he could travel, and carry on working with mechanical stuff. Preferably without being a gypsy who fixed caravans, he chuckled. Just then, the phone rang.
“Hello?”, George answered. He couldn’t be bothered with anyone today.
“A ‘right mate?”, answered the voice at the other end, in a thick liverpudlian accent. It was Mark. “You got any ideas for a job? Me mam’s chucked me out again” George laughed aloud.
“It’s true what they say about scouse families, then? As a matter of fact, I do have an idea for a job. What would you think about joining the army? Sounds good to me- pay, free house on a base… could be just the thing”.
“He’s destabilising!” In the hot and damp medical tent, orderlies milled around the man who lay on the table in the centre of the floor. George was dying. He thrashed around on his bed, his mind not registering the pain his body was in. Finally, the surgeon arrived. He wore a bloodstained apron, with scalpels and capped syringes full of morphine hanging out of the pouch like a sinister infant kangaroo. He had a weather-beaten face; he’d seen it all before, too many times.
“Whats going on with him?”, the Doctor inquired.
“Massive internal bleeding… he needs surgery now, sir”, recommended a senior medic, brandishing x- ray photos at the Doctor, who brushed past him. Uncaring of the swirling melee, like a ghost in the night, the Doctor walked to George, who was still thrashing about on the table. The Doctor took George’s arm, and took a syringe from his pouch. The needle slipped into the skin, like the mouthpiece of a hungry mosquito. A thumb pushed the plunger, and the Doctor shouted
“Ten millegrams morphine going in….” A minute later, the potent opiate did its work and the thrashing stopped. His pulse was still weak, but had slowed to a safer level. His blood pressure, though, the Doctor noted, was through the floor. The room was silent and still. The doctor breathed in long and slow.
“Get this man to theatre. I’m going to do what I can.”. The Doctor said, and walked away to get ready. “Oh, and contact HQ. They have to inform his family.”
The shaking stopped as the ramp on the Hercules transport reached its fully open position. The thirty young men checked their parachutes one last time. They looked at the light by the door- still red. The men turned their heads to the standing figure of Lieutenant Lewis. He shouted out the orders that they already knew about and had studied countless times on the way to this god-forsaken place.
“Stand up! 60 seconds!”, he shouted over the whistling wind. The men stood up, unclipping their arrestor hooks from their ‘chutes.
“Clip on!”. The men took the hooks and attached them to the line running the length of the cargo bay.
“30 seconds!” George looked over at Mark, who was facing forwards, looking at the helmet of the man in front. He heard another man whispering the Lord’s Prayer; someone else simply closed his eyes and raised his head to look at the ceiling. George thought of all of his friends at home, his family, his little sister, and his girlfriend. He had never had a chance to tell any of them he was shipping out. He thought more of them, imagining their faces, imagining their voices. A huge explosion interrupted his reverie, and the plane lurched to one side. One unfortunate man was thrown out the door screaming, spinning uncontrollably to his death. Another was hit by burning kerosene from an auxiliary fuel tank that exploded next to him, and ran screaming through the door.
“Missile hit! Repeat, missile hit! Evac, evac, evac!”, the pilot screamed through the intercom. “Ejecting!” There was a roar as the pilot saved himself from certain death. Shocked, George looked at the still red light at the back of the plane. He muttered a hurried prayer.
“Let’s go!”, screamed the Lieutenant. No- one needed telling twice. Like lemmings running to a cliff, they charged for the exit. Some of the men got out in time. Others were not so lucky. The plane’s nose jerked upwards as another explosion severed the arrestor line, and all the men in the plane were thrown out of the door, all spinning. except for the charred remains of what had been the co- pilot, who had been immolated in the first hit. The plane span downwards, hitting the ground with a cataclysmic explosion.
George coasted down through the sky. He was still processing what had happened on the plane- it had happened so fast. One second he was thinking of home, next second he had watched two men die. Was this war, he thought? Was this what it was really like, simply watching your friends die completely randomly and without reason? War was hell, he decided, and he’d been in one for less than a minute. He wanted to go home.
Back in Sheffield, the Robertson’s sat watching the TV. They saw the pictures of air strikes on the Novistranos Islands. They saw the British planes roaming the skies, firing missiles at seemingly random intervals at unseen targets.
“Another year, another war”, the correspondents had said. “It’ll be over soon”, they prophesised like fortune tellers, as they always did. The telephone rang.
“Hello?”, said John Robertson, in his gruff voice.
“Is that Mr Robertson?”, inquired the voice.
“Speaking. What do you want? My son is in a war zone. If you’re another double glazing salesman-“ John was cut off by the insistent voice of the caller.
“Mr Robertson, could you take a seat please? I have some bad news. It’s about your son, George….”
“I can’t do any more. Stitch him back up, you. All we can do now is hope.” The Doctor took off his gloves and walked away from the dying man. The Doctor knew he’d be dead in a few hours. There was so much damage to his arteries…. Almost all of them were ruptured. Anyway, the Doctor reasoned with himself, he’d never walk again- he had no legs. He would have to have a colostomy bag too- that much damage had been done by bone shards from the pelvis, shattered into hundreds of pieces. The doctor went into his private room, lay face down on his bed, and wept. There were so many dead… just so many. All young men with their lives ahead of them. War…. War…. War. A three-letter word, with so many implications.
George thought again. He was drifting away from these thoughts now; he was running out of the energy to think them. He remembered back to when he hit the ground.
George unclipped his parachute and took his SA-80 from his pack. He had come down in a clearing, luckily. In training, they had showed the pictures of men who had landed on trees. Nervously, he spoke into his radio microphone.
“Bravo 2-6 to any friendly units, respond…Bravo 2-6 to any friendly units, please respond, over”
“Bravo 2-5 here. Whats your status, George?” It was Mark.
“I’m OK”, he replied. “The plane…. How many got out alive? Do you know?”
“I saw 12 chutes as I came down, including yours. I was last out. The last thing I saw was the back of the plane completely shearing in two…. they’re all dead.” Sixteen men… hurled to their doom. Sixteen friends. Sixteen families. It all sank in.
“OK… I’ve looked at the map. Meet at grid 502-178”, said Mark.
“Roger, see you-“ George stopped talking. He’d seen something move in the trees to his left. George immediately went prone, and looked around him. He crawled through the undergrowth, and saw a man walking away. He looked in his early twenties… maybe the same age as George. He carried an AK-47, and wore a red t shirt, with the words “Always Coca Cola” emblazoned on the back. George moved again, this time snapping a twig. The man turned around, eyes wild with panic. He lifted his gun to shoot George. George instinctively pulled the trigger on his rifle. A shout of gun, and the man was on the floor. George lay there, stunned. He’d just killed a man. He got up to look at the man. and jogged. The rendezvous couldn’t be far away now.
A half hour later, George was being briefed by the lieutenant. They had 11 men in the squad, and the main force had landed on the beach a few miles away. Helicopters buzzed overhead…..
“Now that the war is through with me…”
George stepped forwards….
“I’m waking up I cannot see….”
His foot hit something metallic…..
“Deep down inside I feel the scream…..”
“Landmine!” shrieked a squaddie. George was in terrible pain…….
“This terrible silence stops me…..”
The world went white.
“Now the world is gone, I’m just one,
Oh God help me…..”
The pain stopped. George remembered no more.
“He’s dead, Doctor”.