Privately, I always hoped and prayed we wouldn’t be called up for deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was like an unspoken conversation between Jamie and myself that I hoped to God we would never have to face. Sadly, that wasn’t to be. On 10 February 2007, Jamie was called in by his Commanding Officer and told that he would be deployed to Afghanistan with his regiment and given the dates. In an awful twist of fate, later that week, I was called by my Commanding Officer and told I had been selected to deploy to Iraq. Because we were parents the Army wanted to ensure one of us would stay at home with Milly, who was still only two years old, so it became a decision as to who would stay behind and who would go. My CO said: ‘Go home, have a chat with your husband and decide what you want to do and come back to me with your plan tomorrow.’
That night, Jamie and I sat down over a cup of tea and hammered it out. He said: ‘My whole regiment is deploying to Afghanistan so it makes sense for me to go and for you to stay with Milly.’ But I wasn’t having any of it. I said: ‘Well, I’ve been picked up on a trawl and I think I should go to Iraq as there’s less risk out there and Milly needs her daddy as she grows up.’
A trawl is where individuals who have certain skills that are required in the theatre of war are chosen for deployment. This meant instead of going with 47 Regiment, whom I was attached to, I would go by myself and I’d be attached to another regiment once I arrived. Jamie was ten years older than me and I felt he’d already done his time as he’d served in Northern Ireland when the troubles were really bad, as well as Kosovo. He was also ex-Infantry and he had a lot of weapons skills so I felt that if he deployed then he might not be used in his current role, as an admin clerk, but that he would probably be used for other things. We both knew things were tough in Afghanistan. Rumours had spread like wildfire that his old unit, The Argyles, had had to use their bayonets for the first time in twenty-five years, something unheard of in modern warfare. I was terrified that if he went then he would end up being injured or worse.
We were both acutely aware there had been tragic loss of life in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but I felt the right thing was for me to go. My view was that even though I was a mum going to a war zone, it was no different from the hundreds of young dads going out to do their job and serve their country. Some dads are deployed when their wives and girlfriends are pregnant and the women give birth when they are away. They normally get compassionate leave for two weeks to meet their newborn baby.
As a woman, if I was pregnant I would never be deployed, but now I’d had my six months’ maternity leave, returned to work, got back to fitness and it was time to do the job I’d signed up to do. Naively, I was convinced there was much less chance of me getting injured in Iraq, so even though I was desperately torn about leaving Milly, I felt it was the right thing to do for my family and ultimately this was the job I’d signed up for. When I gave birth to Milly and decided to stay in the Army I’d known that one day I might have to leave her and that day had come.
So the decision was made. I’m very single-minded and headstrong and I said: ‘No, I’ll go instead of you as it makes far more sense.’ If I’m honest, Jamie didn’t have much of a choice about it really as I steamrollered him into agreeing. I knew he would have liked to have gone as he’s a proud man and it was hard for him to see his platoon go off and not be with them, but this was something I wasn’t going to budge on. I did it for him and, in my mind, so our child would have a father. Ironically, at that time I believed Afghanistan, where Jamie would have been deployed to, to be far more dangerous than Iraq.
Once the decision was made Jamie did everything he possibly could to support me, just as he always did. I had only two and a half weeks to sort my life out and then go to my first conflict zone. My parents were absolutely devastated when I told them that night. Mum said she couldn’t understand why I was doing it and asked if I’d really considered how hard it was going to be to leave my baby.
For me, preparations were so fast that I didn’t really have any time to think about the consequences. I went to see Nikki, who was gutted that I was going but promised to help Jamie look after Milly while I was away and said that she’d support him for me.
Within days I kissed goodbye to Milly for the first time as I was placed as a priority case on an OPTAG (operational training and advisory group) course, where they had a town set up in ex-Army quarters. There were people dressed up as locals, playing the enemy; I had refresher training to teach me how to deal with the enemy, the rules of engagement the British Army follow, as well as methods used for clearing buildings and compounds. You don’t just go storming into a building as there could be anyone in there, so I was taught how to check that it is empty and how to deal with the enemy if they are hiding inside, including warning: ‘Stop or I’ll shoot’ before firing a round. You all have your weapon and everyone has to practise and re-practise through role-play. We were shown how to use equipment we might be given in theatre, given presentations on IEDs, showing what they could look like, what to expect and how to deal with them, how to recognise heat exhaustion in people, and there was even a talk on sexually transmitted diseases and protecting yourself over there. It was a pretty intense four days, starting at seven in the morning and ending at seven in the evening.
Every morning before it started I’d ring Jamie and tell Milly I loved her down the phone. I missed her terribly but I knew this was just the start and six long months in the Iraq desert stretched ahead of me. The British Army training is second to none but the fact is nothing can prepare you for the harsh reality of war. Everyone has to do the course, no matter what trade or rank you are.
Life seemed to hurtle towards deployment day and I wrote a will, took out life insurance and wrote a letter that says: ‘Not to be opened until my funeral’. I still have it now and it’s still sealed. In it, I planned my own funeral and I asked for Leonard Cohen’s version of ‘Hallelujah’ to be sung. I also told Mum, Dad, Jamie and my brothers that I didn’t want them to waste their lives grieving for me but instead to channel all their energies into looking after Milly. They weren’t to wear black; instead I wanted them to celebrate my life and be proud of what I’d achieved. I also wanted Milly to have my medals when she was old enough.
Everything was efficient and practical and perhaps I was a bit in denial about the realities I faced ahead of me. As Jamie had eight years more experience than me in the Army he helped me pack my kit as he’d done in his Infantry days. ‘Don’t worry about Milly, I’m going to take care of her,’ he told me. He recognised that that was one of the most important things and he helped me to choose lots of pictures of Milly to take so a bit of home would always be with me.
I also had my eyelashes tinted, my armpits, legs and bikini line waxed and my hair dyed – there are no beauty salons on camp. It’s also impossible to wear make-up when it’s so hot as it just slides off your face. A contraceptive injection was also booked in at the doctors – not for birth control, but so that I wouldn’t have any periods. Every female soldier I knew did that when they were on deployment as it’s one less thing to have to worry about.
One of the more difficult preparations was that your kit had to be marked with a number, made up of the first three letters of your surname and the last three numbers of your military number. You have to write it on the front of all your kit and body armour so that you are identifiable if you are injured or killed. It’s not a nice thing to do at all. Jamie helped me write on the letters, but as we did it we were both silent, thinking about why we were doing it.
My parents came down a few days before I left. Mum tried to talk to me again about why I was doing this. I told her: ‘Mum, I can’t talk about this now. I just need your support while I’m there. I’m going to a war zone and I need to know you are there for me.’
Because I was going to miss Milly’s birthday and Easter we had an Easter cake and she got to stay up really late. I put on a smile and made a pretence of eating, but inwardly I felt sick with nerves and I had no appetite. When we finally put her to bed I kissed her goodbye and told her I loved her and that I’d be home soon. In my mind I was already counting down the days until I’d be home again and I consoled myself she was too young to understand what Mummy was doing.
It was still pitch black at 4am the following morning when a dark green Land Rover came to pick me up from the door to take me to RAF Brize Norton. My best friend’s fiancé knew how upset I was about going so he volunteered to do it to give me moral support. I said goodbye to Mum and Dad and to Jamie but I didn’t cry – if I’m really honest, I felt numb. It’s like when you wait for a holiday, and you are travelling to the airport and it doesn’t feel real as you have been waiting so long for it. Jamie wanted to hold me and his last words were: ‘I love you, Hannah.’
Anxious, I didn’t speak on the two-hour drive. We stopped and got a McDonald’s breakfast on the way, the last one I’d be able to eat for a while. Driving into the base I felt a knot of nerves twist inside me before I was picked up in a whirlwind of checking in, showing ID and going through all the protocols you have to do to ensure you’ve got all the kit you need with you before boarding a huge RAF aircraft with one piece of hand luggage. The most important item in my carry-on bag was a photo of Milly smiling in a pink romper suit.
On board, the aeroplane was just like a charter flight inside with seats. It’s anything but a holiday experience, though, as you are all in kit and there’s an air of expectation. It’s not a pleasant feeling – you can sense everyone’s trepidation about what they are flying into. Surrounded by other military personnel there was plenty of banter, but I didn’t have anybody to share my jangling nerves with as I was flying as the sole member of my unit.
Before landing at our final destination in Basra there was a brief stop-off at Kuwait at a military airport. The Kuwait camp was a vast sea of tents. It was the middle of the night, the air was cool but there were unfamiliar sounds, and a silence fell on everyone as we waited to board the second plane. This time it was net seating for the two-hour flight and we had to put on full body armour. The lights were on as we left Kuwait but when we got to half an hour before landing, they were turned off – the mortar threat was very real. I looked around and all I could see was the whites of all of the lads’ eyes in the pitch black. Fear was palpable as everyone was nervous about landing safely.
As we touched down at Basra Airport our nerves were justified as we suffered a mortar and rocket attack, which was quite a welcome. You couldn’t see out to spot the telltale streaks across the sky, so the first we heard was the deafening crash of an explosion, which shook the plane. We disembarked with mortars still flying over our heads and they were strangely beautiful as they traced across the sky like shooting stars.
To be honest, at first I had no idea what was going on. Then an alarm went off that sounded like a World War II siren you hear in the movies and we were all ordered to lie on the ground. For the second time that night all you could see was the whites of everyone’s eyes, except they were wider this time in the moonlight. Seconds later there was another series of booms. We’d been travelling for twenty-four hours and were absolutely shattered; we all lay, quietly praying for the all-clear. Someone tried to break the tension by saying: ‘Welcome to Iraq!’ but everyone was rattled. Little did I know it but compared to the rest of my time in Iraq, the explosions I heard then were distant ones.
When it finally ended we were all ushered, shaken, into the airport to collect our bags. The staff, who were accustomed to regular onslaughts as a part of camp life, were all very matter-of-fact as they were used to the mortar alarm, but I didn’t even have time to fully register what had just happened and its implications as I was so exhausted. There was a speech about a form we then all had to fill in that checks you into Theatre.
After I had collected my bag, I was greeted by the guy whose job I would be taking over. He led me through the camp, which was as huge as a small town. First, he took me to where I would be sleeping – a shack that resembled a large Anderson Shelter with individual rooms inside. On the mud floor you had some matting and a cot onto which you put your sleeping bag. You were given a laundry sack with a tag with your name and number on it. It was incredibly dusty from the desert everywhere, including the room, and it was stiflingly hot. To try and make it a tiny bit homely I placed a photo of Milly and Jamie above my bed and then managed an hour and a half’s fitful sleep before I had to get up to be briefed about my new job.
My eyes were rolling in my head with tiredness as he explained my role was ‘OPLOC’ or ‘Operational Location’, a largely administrative role that involved checking people in and out of Theatre and briefing new arrivals. This could include full units arriving to individual people like myself coming in. A darker side of the job was checking who had been killed or injured. I started work later that day after a few more hours of getting my head down.
Although my job was initially admin, we were still acutely aware of the risks. The mortar bomb siren became almost a daily part of our lives. The second we heard the warning, dropping to the floor became an automatic reaction. The abnormal becomes the grinding norm and we lived on our nerves, constantly aware of the threat. Just as terrifying was the fact that kidnap and rape became risks. The reason the kidnap threat was stepped up was that someone had stolen some of the camp laundry. The system in place was that you’d stick all your dirty kit into the sack you were given, which was tagged with your name, dump it in a huge laundry bin, they’d take it away and twenty-four hours later, you’d collect it from another bin. Somehow some uniforms had gone missing.
I can only speculate, but I suspect it would probably have been local guys who were threatened that their families would be killed if they didn’t do it. But it meant there was a risk (albeit a relatively small one) that someone might try to enter the camp or trick a patrol. The reality was they probably wouldn’t have got very far as they’d have been stopped at the gate and all patrols were aware of the risk – and no one was taking any chances.
What I hadn’t expected about camp life was that it wasn’t totally self-contained and insular. Every day locals would turn up at one of the gates to be employed in various roles inside the camp as contractors. Some hated what you stood for, and particularly as a woman, as pretty much every adult female we saw from outside wore a hijab or a burka. We weren’t allowed to walk around in groups of less than four because of the perceived risk, so it meant that if you wanted to go anywhere on camp you had to have someone with you. You were also warned there was a risk of snipers and that one had shot at quite a few of the boys outside camp. Outside camp mortars and IEDs were an ever-present threat.
When there was a death or serious injury the whole camp would be shut down into what was known as ‘Op Minimise’. When Op Minimise kicked in, the Internet and phone lines would be shut down and there would be no communication with the outside world. This would ensure they could inform the family of the deceased or injured before you rang up your own family and said: ‘Somebody died here last night and I know who it is.’
Op Minimise happened regularly during the worst times. And quickly I learned the signs that there was bad news coming. The office would go a bit quiet beforehand, then the Commanding Officer would make a solemn announcement. Initially there were no names, only their Army numbers. Tears were rare – at least in public – but always there was an overriding sense of sadness that would spread throughout the camp. Often I felt: ‘What a waste’ and you felt for the families who would receive the news they would have prayed wouldn’t happen.
The longest Op Minimise was in place after a huge IED absolutely destroyed a tank. It was miles from the camp, near Basra city, but still we all heard the bang. At first it was so loud that I thought the camp itself had been hit. We all waited for the mortar alarm to go off, but it didn’t. The IED was so huge there was no chance of anyone surviving. Tragically, the whole team of four was killed, including a female soldier who was a friend of Prince William’s.
For days afterwards the camp was locked down with no contact with the outside world and inside everyone was in mourning for the loss. Morale hit rock bottom after that as we all felt for their families. It hit the female soldiers even harder if there was a possibility that a woman was among the dead. You thought you knew the worst the insurgents could do and then they still had the ability to shock you with something as extreme and horrific as that.
That incident brought home to every one of us the horror of war. While we didn’t know everyone who was killed, every death or injury affected us all as we realised someone’s loved one was gone and we also knew that next time it could be someone we knew… or even ourselves. The truth was, life generally in Iraq was absolutely horrific. Aware they could be engaged at any moment by insurgents the guys faced nightmares on patrol. However, despite the threat of IEDs, snipers and mortar and rocket attacks, they unflinchingly served their country. Their courage is extraordinary and I have so much respect for them as it’s such a hard job.
After a few weeks I was moved to another area of the camp, called Camp Charlie. There, I joined two other women inside one section of living quarters, made up of huge sand-coloured tents. Each of the shared living quarters was divided by a wooden wall so that you had privacy; a corridor ran the length of the tent. I was the only mum in my working group. There were three of us in my room: a forty-something flame-haired soldier called Debbie Hill, who was the bubbliest Territorial Army Private you’ve ever seen, and Corporal Sally Allison. They became two of my closest friends out there, along with another soldier, Corporal John Lewis, whose tent was nearby and who used to keep an eye out for us.
Unlike the Anderson Shelters, these tents had no overhead protection so the ‘powers that be’ devised a way for us to avoid getting shrapnel wounds if a mortar or shrapnel whizzed through them: we all had to build our own ‘Concrete Coffin’. First, we were taken to collect a series of breeze blocks, which we then had to drag into the tent. Then you’d build yourself a two- or three-block high wall around your bed space. You were also offered a camp bed, but John explained to me that everyone turned it down and chose to sleep on the floor in their sleeping bag – the risk was that if a mortar bomb hit, the shrapnel could slice through the tent and kill you. So inside your Concrete Coffin you had more protection the lower to the ground you were – unless you took a direct hit, of course.
Inside our ‘coffins’ we were also handed a mosquito net and a hard mattress. Above the space you had to pin an A4 piece of laminated paper with your name, number and rank on it. That way, if anything happened to you, or if your accommodation was bombed, there would be a way of tracking who was supposed to be there. The coffin became home for the duration of my tour. To try and make it a little less grim I used Blu-Tack to plaster it with photos from home of Milly and little drawings and paintings she’d done at nursery. Everywhere I went, I always carried a photo of her under my body armour next to my heart.
Whenever I got a chance I’d ring home and tell Jamie what was happening and I loved to hear Milly’s voice. ‘I miss you and I’ll see you soon,’ I’d tell her. She used to say, ‘I miss you too mummy.’ It was so bittersweet, as while I was over the moon to hear from her my heart was breaking because I missed her so much. It was like a physical pain.
Mum also posted me a pink shower curtain, so I hung that makeshift over the top of my bed. It wouldn’t have won plaudits as a design feature as it looked awful, but for me it was a reminder of real life back home.
Day to day, though, life was pretty grim. Showers and loos at Camp Charlie were worse than festival standard so you’d always wear flip-flops – even in the shower. There was a ‘Portaloo man’ also known as ‘the sh*t man’, out of earshot, who drove around with huge ‘hoovers’ that sucked the poo out of the loos each day. Often they were so full you’d have to kick the front of them to get the poo to settle so that you could sit on the toilet without it touching your bum.
The women had their own shower block, subject to there being running water. Even then you couldn’t escape the reality of where you were. There was one occasion when Debbie and I were having a shower and the mortar alarm went off and we had to lie on the bathroom floor, lathered up, completely naked and then talk awkwardly to each other until the threat passed. We’d rather have our lives than our dignity.
Because it was so grim, something of a Blitz spirit existed around camp. Among fellow soldiers there was a strong sense of community and you’d soon get to recognise faces, although not every face was as welcome as others. For instance, every morning there was a little Iraqi guy who would stand outside the front of the female tent, holding two electrical wires. Each day we’d walk out on the way to breakfast and he’d say hopefully: ‘Electrics?’ He wanted to have a little wander through the female tent if someone gave him permission, probably imagining we had all kinds of flesh on show. But he never stood a chance of fulfilling his fantasy for we didn’t even have electrics in the tents.
On another occasion an Egyptian contractor – so ironically, not a local – sneaked into our shower block and hid inside a cupboard. One girl screamed when she heard a noise and that dirty little man, realising he’d been rumbled, burst out from under the sink and scarpered. It was reported to the Royal Military Police and within an hour he’d been caught – security was so tight. He would have been sacked and that was the end of it. I always made sure I checked the cupboards in the shower block before having a wash after that.
After two months I’d fully grasped what being in a war zone is really like. Six people had died, and on the grapevine I’d heard that Allies had reportedly killed more than seventeen Iraqis directly involved in attacks on the camp or its residents. We were never told the full figures, but the camp rumour mill was rife with information about things that had taken place.
The weird thing about war is that you have spurts of activity, where you are running on adrenaline and you are full of fear and then there’s a lot of downtime where you aren’t really doing much and so you have to entertain yourself and it gets quite boring. The downtime is, in some ways, just as hard, as you are trying to process what is happening around you, but you can’t as it’s so extreme and you don’t want to offload on each other as you might tip someone else over the edge. Debbie would try to devise mad ideas to keep everyone’s spirits up. Along with her kit she’d managed to cram in a belly dancing skirt and she used to dance, jiggling her belly and bottom in the tent with the two of us – even though there was no music – to have us in hysterics and break the monotony.
Debbie was a beautician in Civvy Street and while she was a brilliant soldier she was also a girly girl like me, so when she discovered that Boots The Chemist would deliver to BFPO addresses she was the first to place an order. As a treat she ordered Veet cold wax – the stuff in the roll-on bottle – so that she could host a girls’-only waxing party. By then everyone was getting a bit of leg regrowth. As she was trained on the professional kit, she was confident that she could do the job.
On the night it arrived, I was first to have a go. Instead of a nice beauty parlour bed, she got me to lay on the dirt on the floor of the tent before she started rolling cold wax down my leg. I immediately started yelling – it was more painful putting the cold wax on than pulling it off. We started laughing so hard in the tent I was doubled over when the mortar alarm went off. Immediately the laughter stopped. We had to throw on our body armour and helmets and I lay there with half-waxed legs, thinking this wouldn’t be a very dignified way to go. Then, as we continued to wait for the all-clear, I became desperate for the loo. You can’t just stroll off to the toilet block when you are in the midst of a potential mortar attack so I had to grab a plastic bag and have a wee in it, while my legs were still sticky and covered in wax. It was a really undignified moment and afterwards I vowed never to have my legs waxed in a war zone again, but you can’t be a princess over the call of nature when you are in a conflict zone.
Another issue was that tap water would regularly run out on camp as it was delivered by lorry each day and pumped into massive underground tanks. By mid-afternoon when everyone had showered, more often than not, the water was gone. So if you wanted to guarantee a shower, you needed to be up at the crack of dawn. If we didn’t get up in time we found out a way to improvise: shower using bottled drinking water. We came up with the idea when Sally brought us all bright green face masks when she came back from two weeks R&R. After a lovely pampering session we went to the showers and there wasn’t even a drop of water so we had no way of getting it off. So we improvised and stacked the bottled water in the forty-degree sun outside our tent, waited for it to heat up and then used it to wash it off. From that day on, if we missed the shower water, we’d have bottled water hot showers.
The pampering sessions may sound frivolous, but in reality they were anything but. They were a great way to keep your sanity in the pressure-cooker atmosphere and a real treat for we had nothing. Another time my mum sent some Boots No7 nail varnish, which became the most prized contraband in camp. Obviously, we weren’t allowed to put nail polish on our fingernails but loads of the female soldiers had red toenails under their steel toe-capped boots. The ultimate in decadence, it was a way of keeping our spirits up.
A few months into my deployment Debbie also went home for two weeks R&R, where she dreamed up another morale booster. Not only did she come back with face cream, she also brought me a special gift: Norman the Gnome. My new friend, complete with a fishing line, stayed outside our tent for five weeks and even became an unofficial camp mascot.
One day we woke up and discovered that Norman had been kidnapped. Determined to repatriate him, we went to the Admin office armed with a photo of him and posted up missing posters all over the camp. Even the British Forces Radio got involved in a campaign to rescue Norman. After a week we received a phone call from the Quartermaster, saying: ‘I think I’ve got something of yours here.’ It turned out one of the little Iraqi guys had found Norman in a portable loo and thought he was there for the taking so had taken him home for this garden in downtown Basra. Then he’d seen the missing posters, panicked that he was going to lose his job as they were paid good money, so he came clean and brought Norman back, pleading not to be sacked.
So Norman once again lived quite happily on our doorstep for a few weeks until he was kidnapped again. This time we received a ransom note that he would only be returned if we delivered twenty-five cans of Coca-Cola. So we headed to the Naafi – the camp tuckshop – and left the drinks at a designated location. But we were double-crossed and Norman wasn’t freed and all the Cola was pinched! We then started receiving letters from all over Iraq: including of Norman sat on a toilet, riding the top of a tank and even on R&R, back in Britain!
As we got further into my deployment the laughs became fewer as the camp began to receive more rocket and mortar attacks and one hit just outside of where I worked. Luckily I wasn’t in when it happened but later on I saw my boss and he looked scared, the first time I’d ever seen him look like that, and it frightened me. It was clear to us all that had it been a different time of day there might have been a different outcome. Everyone realised they had a sell-by date and that no one could be confident they were 100 per cent safe. I knew I had to get on with the job I’d trained to do, but I hated it and I developed a cold sore from the stress of it all. We were in a constant state of extreme pressure and anxiety for we literally didn’t know what was going to happen next. Morale was low and the only thing that kept us going was the fact that we all had each other and so we started to settle into some sort of routine. We were building a haphazard family and starting to make a life within the compounds of camp.