I am an olive-green thirty-litre day-sack. BA5799 bought me from a surplus store in a garrison town while he was still in training. During my first exercise he tried to get me dirty so I no longer looked new but battered and experienced—not how he felt but how he wished he did.
He packed me countless times with radios, blank and live ammunition, warm clothes and bladders of water, with rations that he pushed down my sides. Everything had a place and was individually waterproofed. He used me as a seat on cold wet training areas. He crawled up streams and fired his rifle into trenches and men pretended to be dead.
He stuffed me with metal weights that were wrapped in towels and ran out over the hills as I slapped up and down against his back.
He wrote his number on me in black ink that faded as we waited to be deployed. Again, I was on cold wet training areas and he attacked positions on small grassy hillocks while people in red raincoats walked past with their dogs. He was killed and wounded a number of times and joked with the other men as he was carried through the casualty evacuation chain. He drank tea until exercise control told him he was alive again. Once a man in a luminous vest shouted, “You’re dead, sir.” He was annoyed to be out of the game so early and threw me down in the gorse in frustration.
We spent more time training. And then his room started to fill with new equipment and he named it all with a marker and laid it out across the floor. He redrew BA5799 over the faded black lines on me.
One morning he put into my top pocket things that could take his mind off what was ahead: a book, his iPod, along with his documents and passport. He dropped his dog tags over his head and folded a beret, pushed it in and zipped me closed. We left the camp on a bus while it was still dark and boarded a plane.
When the plane landed we were part of a single file of men, all carrying day-sacks, that extended down the steps onto a wide apron. It was hot and his shirt soon dampened next to me. We walked through a city built on a grid with prefabricated windowless buildings and tents, refuelling dumps and blast protection walls, dog cages and fire points. Heavy vehicles rumbled past and small groups of soldiers strolled back to their accommodation, their uniforms sun-bleached and their hair long.
We were ushered into a hangar filled with bunk beds. Instructions were shouted and everyone filed down the rows to find a bed. The high ceiling hummed with the noise of three hundred people. BA5799 chose a bed and slept.
During the next few days he waited in queues to collect equipment. He sat in briefings about the place we had come to and what to expect and what not to get bitten by. He went to the cookhouse and ate from plastic plates and I was put on the ground between his legs. He sat with a small group of men, took a notebook and pen from my top pocket and listened as a man gave orders and they discussed the coming days.
Then he went back to the hangar and pushed me under his bed and started to make adjustments to his kit.
A man on the bunk above rolled over, pulled earphones out and watched. “You all right, sir?” he said.
“Not too bad, thanks. How’s things, Rifleman Plunkett? Aren’t you meant to be at the welfare briefing?”
“Snipers are doing it with A Company.”
“How did your ranges go today?”
“All good. Just want to get out there now. Apparently the lot we’re taking over from are having a pretty rough time,” the man said.
“I’m actually off tonight,” BA5799 told him. “I’m going forward to do the company handover with a few of the command team.”
“Do you know when the rest of us are coming forward?”
“Nothing confirmed yet. It looks like the relief in place will start in five or six days. The plan is for half the company to go out by heli and the rest by road move. It depends on the amount of lift available,” BA5799 said.
“Hope I go by heli. Road convoy would be a rubbish way to start the tour.”
“I’ve heard it can take over twenty hours.”
He continued to repack his gear and taped around the rim of his helmet. Then he pulled open a black tourniquet from a plastic bag. He checked it and wrote BA5799 O POS on it before slipping it into his left thigh pocket.
Next he took six small cardboard boxes and split them open. Copper-coloured cylinders clinked onto the plastic-covered mattress and he lined them up in rows of ten and then thirty. Some were tipped with red phosphorus and he added these one in every five. He pulled six magazines from his grip and started to fill them. He pushed the rounds through the jaws of the magazine with his thumb; he rolled each one to make sure it was seated correctly, depressing the spring until the magazine was full.
A voice shouted across the hangar.
“Listen in, everybody. The advance party is leaving now. Chopper’s early and the colonel wants you out there. Quick as you can. We need you at the heliport in five minutes.” The man was walking along the rows of bunk beds. “That means you, boss. Does anyone know where Sergeant Collins is?”
“No idea,” BA5799 said and swore under his breath, then he started to fumble with his kit. He put the loose bullets in his beret and rolled it before stuffing it into my top pocket. He was agitated, his ritual interrupted. He pulled on his body armour and swore again as he dropped a magazine that clattered on the floor.
The man slid down from the bunk above to help him. He was topless and his arms were tattooed with a regimental cap badge. They closed zips, stuffed his sleeping bag under the lid of his Bergen and clipped it shut before the man lifted it onto BA5799’s back.
“Thanks, Rifleman Plunkett,” he said.
“I’ll make sure the CQ gets your grip and it comes forward, boss.”
“I don’t even know if I’ve got everything I need,” BA5799 said and patted his side pouches.
“You’ll be all right, sir—this is all you’ll need for now,” he said, grinning and passing him the rifle. “Good luck.”
“Damn, where are my goggles? I’ll need them for the heli.”
“Here, take mine. I’ll just go diffy a pair,” he said and reached into the side of his own Bergen.
“Cheers, Plunks. See you on the other side.”
BA5799 walked out of the hangar and stepped into a Land Rover, holding his rifle in one hand and me in the other. The engine ticked over until two other men joined us. Once they were both in and their kit was piled on top of me, the door slammed shut and we drove back towards the airport.
We entered the heliport, dismounted and walked to a Portakabin that was surrounded by T-walls of concrete and covered by a dome of mortar protection. Men stood around a bin smoking. BA5799 placed his Bergen with the others.
“Where to?” a man with a clipboard asked.
“Three for Patrol Base 43—Barnes, Webb and Dale,” BA5799 said.
“Collins not with you? Says here there are four for PB43.”
“Sergeant Collins is on his way—we weren’t expecting the chopper to be leaving so soon. We’ve only just been told.”
“Well the airframe’s been delayed. He might be lucky if he gets here soon,” the man said and made a note on his clipboard.
They waited on benches. It was hot and several men slept. Others arrived and the line of Bergens lengthened. A man appeared, flustered, and said he’d been on the phone with his wife and had no idea. They told him the heli had been delayed and it was just another hurry-up-and-wait. I was between BA5799’s legs and he took the beret from my pocket and continued to fill his magazines with the rounds. Helicopters churned the air and hot engines distorted the ground crews as they pulled out refuelling pipes. They huddled away when the aircraft lifted again into the steel sky.
The man with the clipboard stepped out of the cabin. “Right, we’ve got an airframe in ten minutes. PB43 first and then District Centre—I need the bags and pax for PB43 on last. Are you Sergeant Collins?” he said to the man next to BA5799. “You made it then. You four at the back and get off as quick as you can—nobody likes waiting around at PB43, it’s one of our hottest HLSes at the moment. Pilots are a bit twitchy about it.”
BA5799 extended my straps, pulled me over his body armour and put his helmet on. Men prepared their kit, stubbed out cigarettes and readjusted their Bergens.
The helicopter floated down onto the concrete and its two rotors flattened. A row of soldiers disembarked from the rear, carrying their bags towards the reception area. Two attack helicopters landed beyond and were refuelled.
A man at the rear of the helicopter beckoned and we walked out across the apron. I was on BA5799’s back; he was last in the single file of men. The wind swirled around us and he pulled his goggles down off his helmet. We shuffled forward under the blades and through the exhaust fumes as men walked up the ramp past the mounted rear machine gun. They heaped their Bergens and cases down the centre aisle and then filled the seats and helped each other strap into the four-way belts. BA5799 threw his Bergen onto the pile and assisted the crewman pulling a ratchet-strap over the bags. He was thanked with a thumbs up, then sat in the final seat and placed me between his legs next to his rifle.
The sound of the helicopter escalated and the disc of shadow lightened on the concrete behind. The aircraft twitched as it left the ground. Its shadow shrank and jumped over blast walls, protective walkways, hangars and tents as we banked out towards the desert. Through the open rear door, the two hunched forms of the attack helicopter escort lifted and followed us across the sprawling camp.
BA5799 and the others, rifles upright between their legs, sat on either side of the fuselage, unable to talk over the noise as they were projected low over the empty desert.
Soon the faded scars of habitation lined the sand below. The crewman sat down behind the gun on the rear ramp, pulled a lever that sprang forward and rotated the weapon over the increasingly dense patchwork of villages and the grids of irrigation channels that flashed in the sun. He looked back and held his hand open and shouted, “Five minutes.”
BA5799 lifted a hand to acknowledge him before passing the message to the man next to him. Thumbs ups and nods rippled up the aircraft. The helicopter started to manoeuvre, rocking violently below the rotors as it slewed across the landscape. I slipped and BA5799 grabbed hold to keep me between his legs. Sky and then ground filled the rear opening. An attack helicopter rushed past and the green and ochre ground swept below: a road with a man pulling a handcart, a donkey tied up in a field, a tree line stretching out to a square enclosure.
The engine sound changed and the thud of passing rotors deepened as the aircraft flared into its final approach. We decelerated over the wall of a camp and its watchtower, where a soldier shielded his eyes against the debris. A green tent was blown free and tumbled away across the courtyard until it caught in a vehicle’s bar armour.
Dust kicked up by the downdraught engulfed the helicopter as it lurched in the blindness. Feeling suddenly weightless, the men tensed. The aircraft bounced on its suspension, skidded sideways and then the engines howled and we were airborne again, lifting away through the churning cloud. I pressed into the floor and BA5799 braced his legs against me and closed his eyes in helplessness, his stomach lurching.
The crewman spoke urgently into his microphone and scanned the tree lines around the patrol base, his thumbs ready to depress the triggers as we banked out of the pyre of dust.
We were over the desert again, pitching from side to side, and then we slowed and passed over the same perimeter wall and watchtower. We bounced once and stopped, rocking on the suspension.
The crewman stood up from his gun, lowered the rear door and released the strap holding the Bergens. BA5799 pushed the cylinder to release the belt and slid me up onto his back. He dragged his Bergen free and pulled it down the ramp onto the HLS, out from under the rotors.
The four men crouched together as the helicopter lifted away. Wind stripped dirt and sand from the ground and blasted it against me. The aircraft disappeared over a wall and soon after the attack helicopter high in overwatch drifted away in pursuit and it was quiet.
A man in a T-shirt and flip-flops came out from behind a wall.
“Welcome to Patrol Base 43,” he said. “I’m the second in command. That looked like a bit of a roller coaster. Maybe the pilot couldn’t handle the brownout; can’t be easy though. We once had three attempts.” He grinned. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. Not that we ever get much warning anyway.” He looked down at me and the other bags. “Any post with you? No? Bugger. Post’s about the only thing that makes up for having the camp destroyed every time they come in. Here, let me take that, I’ll show you where you’ll be based and we’ll need to sign you in at the ops room.”
BA5799 picked me up and adjusted my shoulder straps and we followed the man across the HLS into a courtyard of thick mud walls rounded by weather. A few men hammered tent pegs back in, another collected strewn washing.
The man pointed BA5799 to a narrow opening in a wall that led into a dark room with two Z-beds. “That’s where officers stay, and I’ll just show the others to the NCOs’ lines. I’ll come back and give you a tour of the camp in a bit.”
BA5799 ducked through the doorway, sat on a camp bed and leant his rifle against me. He unclipped his helmet and ruffled his flattened hair, then he stretched, opened my top pocket and put his goggles away.
The man came back and stood silhouetted in the doorway.
“You okay? I’m Dave,” he said and held out a hand.
“Tom. Yes, fine, thanks—good to be here.” They shook hands.
There was a sharp clap outside and then another. They both flinched. And then two distant thumps.
“Ah, the teatime contact,” the man said and looked out of the doorway. “The heli must’ve got them all excited. Grab your helmet and rifle, Tom. No better way to show you the camp.”
BA5799 zipped my pocket back up, fastened his helmet strap, clipped a magazine onto his weapon and followed the man out into the light as the air started to clap an uneven rhythm.
I was covered in foreign dust and he left me beside a camp bed in the small room dug into a compound wall. A camel spider crawled across the ground and felt with its hairy legs up and over me.