Chapter 3: Lieutenant Paul Mervis

Back at home, too exhausted to think but strangely elated because Elliott had told us that Cyrus had written to us. Rob spent ages looking in, on and under the kitchen cupboards, but he couldn’t find the letter. It was so disappointing - we were desperate to find it, thinking that it might make us feel better somehow, or at least give us a chance to be close to him again through his words.

The next day, Saturday, Rob and I went down to Glastonbury to see his dad and step-mother. Rob is the middle of five children, and when he was ten his parents divorced. Rob chose to live with his dad. His relationship with his mother and siblings never really recovered from this split and they now have little contact.

There is a strange sense of duty that comes from both Rob and his dad that, to me, is sometimes hard to fathom. They have an unusual relationship in that, as a child and teenager, Rob was left to his own devices with little or no direction from his father. At one stage Social Services were alerted to this situation, and there was the threat of Rob being taken into care. During several home visits by social workers, Rob made it perfectly clear that if they did take him into care, he would run away and go back to his dad. It was decided that living with his father was probably best for him in the long term.

I have known Rob’s dad since I was thirteen, when Rob and I first met. I spent a lot of time at their house as a teenager, and was accepted as part of Rob’s circle of friends. However, the stronger my relationship became with Rob, the harder it was to hold on to a relationship with his dad. I think the final straw, in his eyes, was when many years later, Rob and I decided to buy a house together. He looked at this as me taking his son away which, added to my speaking well and having an opinion, I am sure makes him feel threatened by me, and no amount of effort on my part over the years has changed this. He has never liked his authority challenged, and in the past has openly undermined and disagreed with the way Rob and I have brought the boys up.

He is the way he is, and nothing will change that, but he has over many years drip-fed me snide remarks and said hurtful things, that make my relationship with him verge on the impossible. He changes the rules to suit himself, so it’s ‘be damned if you do, and be damned if you don’t’. As parents, Rob and I instilled in the boys good manners - they cost nothing to give, but can make one’s life run much more smoothly. When they were little and Rob’s dad gave them sweets or a pound coin, and they said, ‘thank you’, the reply would be, ‘You don’t need to thank me for anything.’ But woe-betide them if they forgot that ‘thank you’ - they would be branded ‘rude and spoilt’.

Equally, praise is non-existent. When Zac was about three years old and first started nursery school, we encouraged him to go and tell his grandfather what he had learnt. So he said, ‘Grandad, I can say my alphabet.’ Rob’s dad’s only comment was, ‘Yes, but can you say it backwards?’ Zac, at twenty-one, still cannot say the alphabet backwards, but even if he could, he knows his grandfather’s remark would probably be, ‘Yes, but do you know the Chinese alphabet?’

The boys found his manner confusing and difficult to understand, and so over the years they stopped trying to engage him in conversation, or tell him about their lives. They struggled to have a good and meaningful relationship with him. It is a great pity, an opportunity lost.

However, Rob’s sense of love and devotion goes deeper than simply something between father and son. He is fiercely loyal to his dad, no matter how frustrating his behaviour is, almost as though their roles have been reversed. He will not allow his dad’s strange and difficult ways to tarnish what relationship they have, and many a time he has been the peace-maker. I am far less tolerant, and I simply cannot understand his father’s dismissive and often damning behaviour, but it is one of the many attributes that I love about Rob - his devotion and sense of duty - even if I sometimes feel it is misplaced.

Grief is selfish, but our grief is more so than others’ because he was our son and our pain is so much greater, darker, lonelier and all-consuming. Well, not really, but this is how it feels.

His dad cried, wished he had been in Lyneham, and said he felt he’d ‘missed out.’ ‘No. Only when you have lost your son can you say you have missed out,’ shouted Rob. His dad cried again - he doesn’t really understand. He has never understood; he was not the same sort of parent as Rob. He will never understand the substance that binds us together or the glue that strangles us all at the same time. Maybe it’s more like spider webs that are covered in glue. Sticky, invisible, always catching you when you least expect it, hiding in the corners ready to envelop us all.

We left after a couple of hours. There was nothing left to say, no more wondering what to talk about, no more wishing we were a million miles away. It needed to be done - duty and some sort of sense of love - but it was very hard. Rob’s father and step-mother are old now, older than before. Looking at them, knowing they don’t understand and never will should, I suppose, make me feel more sympathetic towards them - but it doesn’t. They have their own grief, but some of that is borne of guilt. We are sorry for them, they so sorry for us - but sorry means nothing - so what is the point? There seems no time to stop and breathe - which is a good thing, as time lets you think. I don’t want to think, it’s all too new, too bleak and brutal.

Steely is playing drums in a band this evening. The band is being graded by their college tutors as part of their first year’s final exams. He was racked with self-doubt. Would he be able to do this? Should he be doing this so soon - was it disrespectful? Would people judge him as uncaring? He knew he could never let anyone down, though, so he pushed through it. Rob, Zac and I went to watch and support him. I know what he is like - he stood tall he was doing this for Cyrus.

The ‘grapevine’ had been at work and the venue soon became awash with the boys’ friends - young people drawn together to show their love and solidarity with Steely, and their pain at our loss. Rob moved through them during the evening, telling them that tonight we were here for Steely but that we would have a time for Cyrus the next day in our garden. ‘Come about 1 pm and we will have a chance to talk then, and toast him properly,’ he said.

Steely played; the band was good and I watched him with an overwhelming sense of love and pride. Oh God. Cyrus, I wish you could see your little brother.

My mother came down from Cambridge the next morning - Sunday; again someone who has guilt, but no glue. She brought a painting with her, wrapped in brown paper and string. It was one of an avocet that Cyrus would have inherited from her. Opening the door and seeing her standing there, I could feel myself shut down. The strain of our relationship over the past few years had finally taken its toll. I don’t think it will ever recover; it’s all too late and meaningless.

My mother, like Rob’s dad, had little to do with the boys’ lives. She was busy with a career and the social life she had built for herself in Cambridge. I know that parents differ in the ways they bring their children up, but sometimes it’s the small things that are not done, that hurt so much.

When Zac was born, Rob and I were naturally thrilled; our first child a boy with fair hair, blue eyes. I assumed that she, as a grandparent, would be equally thrilled. He was six weeks old before she found the time to travel from Cambridge to Reading. I was so terribly hurt by her lack of interest, and perhaps that established the slippery slope we have now found our relationship on.

Yes, grief is selfish - but then so are people. Pain on pain is not helpful when dealing with glue - or am I just being spiteful because of this pain? No, many things have been done and not done, things that cannot be forgiven and now can never be repaired. That is another sadness I now bear.

She left just before the first of the boys’ friends arrived. Zac, Sharpie and Steely had been to get food, plastic cups and bottles of Sambuca. As the afternoon wore on, more and more people arrived, our back garden littered with groups of young people, friends the boys have shared through their lives.

Ever since we moved to this house just ten days before Steely was born, our garden has been its focal point. The semi-detached 1950s house sits almost centrally in a 350-foot plot, set back on a narrow stretch of road, which is divided from the main road by a wide verge and trees. When we first moved in the garden was a bramble-filled wasteland. The house had been vacant for eighteen months, and the council had come in with its ‘slash and burn’ policy, leaving only a few plum trees, the odd rose and hundreds of nettles and brambles. Almost the first job Rob did was to build the boys a treehouse in a plum tree at the top of the garden. He planted some conifers to give the area a more secret feel. Sometimes, when the boys were a little older, and felt brave enough, they would spend the night in the treehouse, curled up in sleeping bags with Haribo sweets and plastic swords.

Slowly the garden took shape, flowerbeds were formed and planted with rhododendrons and bluebells, and ferns and lilies that were trampled accidentally and damaged by games of football. Cyrus and Steely were mad about the game, both involved in football teams as players and fans - Manchester United their club, like Rob. Zac would join in but he was always the one to kick the ball over the fences or break my shrubs. Even though he was never that interested in football, and still isn’t, he would join in, never one to shirk out if there is a game and a laugh to be had.

Camouflage netting, woven into trees and across the top of the wooden bike-shed, provided cover for their army games. Ropes and pulleys were set from the loft windows to the bottom of the long front drive, and Action Men were dispatched, some with fire-crackers attached to them, the winner being the one whose man made it to the bottom or lost the fewest limbs, these often being the only time they really used the front garden to play in.

An above-ground swimming pool appeared one hot summer. It was more like vegetable soup than water with the number of children in it, but they loved it, shrieking with laughter as Rob’s pot-holing wetsuits were used on those less sunny days. Cyrus was so skinny he looked like a piece of liquorice from a sherbet dib-dab. He was always the first to turn blue, even with the protection of the Neoprene suit, and needed a hot bath to de-frost. Extraordinary to think he joined the Army, training in some of the coldest places in the UK, and loved every minute of it.

After a couple of summers the games became too rough and the sides of the pool split, creating a huge wave that rushed down the back steps, subsiding just before it reached the back door, leaving a round barren patch where nothing would grow. The following year a trampoline took the pool’s place, this too providing many hours of entertainment, children pinging off in different directions, with remarkably the only major casualty being the trampoline itself. Still, with thirteen kids all jumping on it at one time, it was hardly surprising it snapped shut on them like a Venus fly-trap. All this was a reflection of the childhood Rob wished he himself could have had - nothing brought him more pleasure than seeing the boys and their friends having fun.

As the boys’ needs changed, Rob gave up his garage, deciding that building materials were better stored at the builder’s merchants. He put up a stud wall, creating a separate toilet; carpet tiles went down on the concrete floor, and a television, an old stereo and sofa were installed. The boys and their friends now had a warm, dry place to meet. The breeze-block walls were painted white, and over the years have become covered in graffiti, photo-collages, song lyrics, poems and drawings, all of their friends contributing to the décor. When Steely got his first drum kit, it too found a home there. The garage gave them somewhere to be, other than on street corners or down by the river.

By the time Zac was fourteen he was smoking cigarettes, and our attitude was; better we know and he smokes here, rather than sneaking off and doing it behind our backs. Cyrus soon joined him, both in the smoking and being in the garage. He had tried hanging around on street corners but got cold and wet, and eventually decided he was better off in the comfort of the garage.

The boys bought themselves Play Stations and games with money they’d saved from doing morning paper-rounds - something they all started at the age of twelve, getting up early no matter what the weather because, as Rob said, ‘You will never have an easier job than pushing papers through peoples’ letter-boxes.’ Hours of Pro-football, fantasy adventures and racing games were played in the garage. Some nights there were over twenty of them in there, music blaring, shouting, singing and laughing. Fortunately, we have understanding and forgiving neighbours. Their friends became part of our family.

I can only remember one fight, and that was between two of their friends when too much beer had been consumed. The boys didn’t really fight when they were children - they often argued, but there was rarely blood drawn. Cyrus would always have to have the last word, which frequently got him into trouble with Rob and me, and I’m sure that Steely, as the youngest, was pushed about and dominated by him - so that he was completely clear as to his place in the pecking order. Steely adored him - and no-one else was allowed to push his little brother around; he was fiercely protective of him and would have come down very hard on anyone who tried.

So, that Sunday afternoon once again all were welcomed. We needed them; they needed us. They sat quietly talking, crying, reminiscing. Wandering through them I was touched by the stories I overheard - stories of Cyrus, and how he had always managed to find time for each of them when home on leave, stories of antics at school, long evenings spent here in our converted garage, impromptu ‘gatherings’ in the garden - so many good times. The boys are well loved by their friends, and Rob and I are always included, treated with respect and friendship by them all - I know how much they will all miss him.

We already know we won’t have a wake, now is the time to celebrate his life - while we have the energy and his friends have the need. So Cyrus’s iPod was put on shuffle and his eclectic taste in music filled the air - many smiled at memories the music evoked. Then a song I was vaguely familiar with, brought a complete hush from those within earshot. Rob was sitting on a low wall by one of the ponds, and only the sound of the waterfall interrupted. It was ‘If I could turn back the hands of time’ by R. Kelly - unbelievable - and the song took everyone’s breath away, making every track after seem somehow insignificant.

A toast with Sambuca, four bottles gone in an instant - over 75 plastic shot glasses, filled with the drink Cyrus loved, shared with Zac and Rob every time he was home - it too will always hold memories; I don’t think any of us can drink it without him cascading into our minds.

At 10 pm, exhausted, we pushed the last of them out of the gate and down the driveway. Clearing up Rob put the iPod on again, asking Zac to find the R. Kelly track. Over and over, long after the leftover food was thrown away and the bottles and tins put into plastic bags, the track repeated itself. It was that evening we decided this piece of music would be played at his funeral.

I don’t want to look at flowers or cards any more, but they keep arriving. I know that people mean well, but they don’t understand. I don’t understand, so I don’t know why I think they should. Lilies used to remind me of birth - Zac’s birth, and those happy days when the world was rosy and I was naïve. Now they remind me of death and yet I love them still - am I mad?

Hours turn into days, but I’m not sure when these start or finish. Nothing is clear any more - days, hours, minutes all merge in and out of each other. Flowers and cards - I don’t want any more fucking flowers.

How do I deal with the anger of a seventeen-year-old and the loneliness of a twenty-one-year old? I know that we all have to travel along this path at our own speeds, but trying to explain and come to terms with it is exhausting. At seventeen, Steely wants to move on and away from the pain, Zac wants to stay but needs the pain to go - or at least know when it will go. That is an answer I just don’t have. I don’t know the best way to deal with this grief. I cannot be angry because I don’t know who to be angry with, but I understand the frustration that Steely feels. He needs to move on and feels that by showing he is sad makes it take longer - and is not what Cyrus would have wanted.

I know what Cyrus would have wanted, but he can’t have it yet. It is all still too soon, festering in our minds and hearts. He would have hated the thought of our pain and the fact that he is the cause of it, and yet that’s not what he ever thought would happen. He didn’t go out there to die. He went out there to fulfil his dream and come home. He did fulfil his dream, but unfortunately he left us here wishing his dream hadn’t had to come at such a price.

He has gone and left us behind, trying to make sense of what has happened - trying to come to terms with the impossible. He has left a huge, gaping hole that will never be filled and I don’t think any of us really want it to be filled - just not there in the first place.

I will always have three sons. I just wish it hadn’t been that one was only borrowed for such a short time. I need my three sons and my man. I don’t think I had ever really needed anything before this - not true need in this sense. This has fused Rob and I together, our souls interwoven with love for each other and a pain shared. I want to go back, to start again but to have a different ending. But then I suppose to start again would still lead to this place, because I wouldn’t change a second of any of the things that went before. To do that would be to change us and I don’t want to do that. I just want a different ending.

Letters came too, not just cards. Some meant more than others.

Dear Rob and Helena,

My name is Paul Mervis and I was Cyrus’s Platoon Commander in 2 Rifles. I was very close with Cyrus and he asked me before we left that if anything were to happen to him that he would like me to speak to you. Unfortunately I am not back until the beginning of July and our grief must remain with us here. I just wanted to write to you to express mine and the Platoon’s deep sorrow at the passing of your much beloved son.

Right now, I feel like a part of me has been removed. I know that some of the men are absolutely devastated. If this is how we feel I can only begin to appreciate the pain that you must be going through. Cyrus was such a special boy. I remember the first interview that I had with him when he joined the Battalion. He was so shy but spoke to me with a maturity far greater than all the other young men that would sit at the other side of my desk. I still have it written in my notes - he just wanted to be a good Rifleman, not the RSM or join the SAS. Little did I know what a huge part of our lives he would become.

The first time I really got to know Thatch was on the exercise in Salisbury Plain where he won the valour award and was sent skydiving. That was the first time I learned about all his fears, which remarkably included the robin redbreast, perhaps one of the most inoffensive of birds. When he told me about his fear of flying, I could think of no one better to be thrown out of a plane. In reality, whatever phased Thatch, he would overcome with an understated courage. It was seen when he sky dived but I saw it every day in Afghanistan, I could have asked him to do anything. He was a brave, courageous man.

Thatch used to frustrate me because he was so intelligent. Whenever someone comes across my desk who has the potential to take his academic abilities further I always try to persuade them to get qualifications through the army. Thatch would stand before you sparkling with natural intellect, in the way he analysed events or simply just in the way he talked and the way no one could win a ripping session with him. He just told me flat out that if he wanted to continue his education he would have stayed at school. That was that. No matter how hard I tried, when Thatch was determined there was nothing you could do.

He was mature far beyond his years - something that I can only attribute to you. He would talk about Rob with a reverence and respect that was perhaps a little unusual in a Rifleman. He loved his family completely.

I remember once, catching a plane from Belfast back to London. I was walking down the aisle and I saw Thatch with his cheeky smile patting the seat next to him. I sat and spoke with Thatch for over an hour about ISAs and PEPs, savings and capital, discussed the housing market and what we both wanted by the end of our twenties. I walked away wiser, having spoken to an eighteen year old with more sensible advice than me. That and all Cyrus’s wonderful attributes are a credit to you.

It would be impossible to remember or recount every joke I had with Cyrus or every fond memory, but a summer I will now never forget was in Kosovo last year when we were stuck ‘defending’ a forsaken monastery in the middle of nowhere. I bought a chess set and was desperate to play with someone. Who would step up but Cyrus who would play me at chess from morning until night? Improving all the time, I am sure there was a glint of triumphalism when he won his first game off me. I wasn’t surprised. I would talk to him for hours over those chess games, mostly about inconsequential things, but Cyrus could balance meaningful conversation with jokes easily.

The other side of Thatch, behind all the jokes and laughter, that I flatter myself I perhaps saw more than anyone else in the army, was his caring and thoughtful side. Thatch would always find time to confide in me and I would look forward to the time when I could sit down with him. He would screw up his face slightly into his thoughtful, serious look and we would discuss his future plans, his love life, other people in the Platoon, the fate of the Afghan people. Behind all the jokes Thatch would always be sensitive to how others were feeling and doing. I would always have to stop myself confiding too much in him, trying to keep the line between Officer and Rifleman, now I wish we could have spoken more.

During PDT training Thatch was a reliable as ever. It has already been mentioned in the eulogy but he was so competent that he could as a Rifleman, take a Section and lead it in a demanding attack completely unphased. He was central to the Platoon.

My next and last memory of Thatch, the one that I will cherish for the rest of my life was one evening in the FOB. I was the night watch keeper, which essentially meant that I had to stay up all night in case anything untoward happened. Joe Ells, who like me knew Thatch from the beginning and had always been Thatch’s Section Commander, was the Guard Commander. We were sitting in the Operations Room bored, when we heard Thatch’s and Pricey’s voices on the radio from Sangar 1. We told them to make us brews and they told us to get lost. The usual banter! Joe and I decided that we would go down there and give him a dig, he used to bring out all our inner children. We caught him on his way back to bed. He stopped, gave us that same cheeky smile and sprinted away laughing. I chased him, there wasn’t a hope in hell of me catching him though. We were in the green zone, in a tiny outpost, the IED belt was in, casualties were being taken across the battle group, the Taliban were closing in but that night, that part of Afghanistan, the FOB echoed to the sound of his laughter. I will cherish that memory until the day I die.

When I spoke to the Platoon after his death, I told them that I loved him like a son. It was the only way I could articulate my grief. On reflection I realise, that I hardly knew him, and if he could have that effect on me in two short years that I can only imagine the sense of loss that you feel. The only words of solace that I can offer are that when he died, he died surrounded by people who loved him.

As soon as I return to the UK, I would like to come and speak to you. I will understand if you may not want this and will respect your wishes whatever they may be. If there is anything you want to know in the near future I will leave my e-mail address and you can get in touch with me through that.

All my sympathy

Paul Mervis, OC 10 Platoon, C Company

Despite all the horror and anguish of the past few days, here was a letter from the front line, from someone who knew Cyrus, had known him over the past two years. Our connection with him, hope within this agony of loss. Yes, of course we wanted to meet Paul, talk to him, listen to the stories, and grasp one more chance to live the life of our son through his recollections. Here in this gloom was a shining light. Strange to think that someone we’d not met could suddenly mean so much. We so needed to meet him. I emailed him that afternoon: ‘Yes, please come and see us as soon as you are able.’

The fact that they all miss him so much hurts too. As Paul said, they only knew each other for two years and yet, in the way they live their soldier’s lives, they become one big family - laughing, crying, bleeding and dying for each other. They take it all in their stride - but hurt so very deeply, just as we do. My heart burns for all of them - these losses they have, these sacrifices they make, these men for whom my heart bleeds every time I hear those dreadful words, ‘The family have been informed’. They too are family; they too have altered lives now.

Ian phoned the next day. He had good news and bad; would we be in later so he could come to see us. What possible good news could he have? A mistake and they had got it wrong? Cyrus wasn’t dead - it was a case of mistaken identity? In my heart I knew this wasn’t the news we were going to hear.

We sat down with Ian, always so professional, so kind in this time of dreadful minutes and hours. So, to the good news - we needed some. Ian had been contacted by the Coroner’s Office and they had said that we would be able to see Cyrus one last time. Good news? To be able to see my dead son one more time? Yes - fantastically it was the best news we’d heard since that horrific opening of the door to the faces of those two men and their words of death which left a family ruined. How cruel good news can be.

But then, to the bad. Surely there cannot be any worse than we’ve already been told. But there’s no card too savage to be dealt. What a kick in the stomach. Lieutenant Paul Mervis (Mad Dog) had died in a blast in Afghanistan just that morning, ten days after Cyrus.

Of all the letters we received, dead men wrote the ones that I will treasure, the ones that mean the most to me. Other letters are written by people you know you will never meet or want to see - royals, government officials, army personnel, long-lost friends and Sir Alex Ferguson. Oh, how Cyrus would have loved to see that letter. How ironic that we got Paul’s letter the day before he was killed, so he wouldn’t have read our email. How monstrous - glue returns. Letters from families who have the same pain as we do - the same sticky substance in their veins. All of us now have a common agony. I want to give mine away - but who the hell would want it? More to the point, who the hell would I give it to? No one deserves this; no parent should have to bury their child.

I have a new skin. It doesn’t fit and gives me blisters. I wonder how long it will take for the skin to harden and get used to the new pressure points. Some places will always have to be bandaged and bathed. I don’t think they will ever harden and accept that new skin.

Sometimes, when I wake in the night, I think that I’ve got my old skin back - but then I feel the blisters start to burn. Conscious thought is cruel. My mind wanders away from the awful and zigzags along, making new thoughts. When I get to the end I always ask myself how I got there in the first place, and then all the zigzags unfurl and take me screaming back to the awful. I can’t stop that zigzag process. Why does it have to go back to the beginning? Why can’t it just stay in that slightly confused state, and not question the road it took to get there? My mind is torturing me and there seems no relief.

Perhaps the glue is depression. I hate that word. My mother is a psychiatrist and it makes me remember visiting old men in filthy pyjamas with their bottoms hanging out, in long, cold wards at ‘The Hospital’. That was Borocourt Hospital, Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire, that had originally been built as Wyfold Manor House in 1878, and had been purchased by Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire County Councils in 1930 as an institute for ‘mental defectives’. It was closed in 1993 and sold when patients and staff moved into smaller units throughout the counties. The main building was converted into private flats in 2000. This was where my mother worked, helping those poor souls who had lost their way - and sometimes we would go with her. Now I know how they feel - but I still never want to visit those corridors again. We were so frightened of those men with their grey whiskers and even greyer faces. Dead eyes - they all had dead, unseeing eyes. I don’t think mine are dead yet - just unseeing, shrouded in glue and pain. No, I don’t want to go there again - it was a cold and scary place.

I’m not scared - but I do feel cold. People we’ve met along this journey say we are ‘fantastic and amazing’. I certainly don’t feel either of those things. How I am is just how I have to be. I guess Cyrus’s strength of character came from somewhere, but I don’t feel strong - just sad... so very, very sad. I’m not the sort of person to sit and wail in a corner and tear my hair out, but I’m not strong. Perhaps ‘determined’ is a better word to use. I’m determined to make sure that the pride I feel for my children is shared with others, and that it doesn’t get lost in the grief. They carry themselves so well, my men, and I need to make sure that they don’t have to carry me too. I must use my own strength to move forward, not rely on theirs - that would be too crippling for them and I have never wanted to be a burden.

Have you ever been to the seaside and stood barefoot on the edge of the sea? The waves move in and out - no way of stopping them. Even if you dig your heels into the sand as hard as you can, when the tide recedes it trickles out from underneath them. My pain is like that. I can’t stop it, no matter how hard I tread in the sand.