Andy McNab - War torn

'You shouldn't be here,' Dave said to Jamie. 'You should be lying down. You heard what the medic said.'

He'd advised him again to go to Bastion for a proper check-up, but without success.

'I'm fine,' Jamie insisted.

The one man who remained focused and kept firing was Angus. Straight after today's ambush, Dave had noticed the subtle changes in the lad's demeanour. Angus held himself differently. His face was sharper and he moved with a new confidence. Dave recognized this sudden maturity. Kill a man and age a year, he thought to himself.

The fighting stopped as suddenly as it had started. Everyone waited for a renewed attack. Men stayed in position but they relaxed. Angus got down into some cover and lit a cigarette.

'You were good today, McCall,' Dave said. He knew Angus would understand his previous failures had been forgiven. Even though it was dark, he could see the big lad blush in response. He thought he saw Angus's tattoos blush as well. To his relief, Angry did not use the occasion to mention his father.

No one trusted the silence but when it continued the men gradually stood down.

Thirty minutes later, in 1 Section's tent, Dave found Jamie fast asleep. 'Thank God for that.'

Binns and Bacon were sitting on their cots with their boots on.

'The medic gave him a mountain of pain relief and he was out like a light,' Binns said.

'Good,' Dave said. 'Now boots off, you two, if you're getting your heads down.'

The two lads immediately sat bolt upright.

'Or if you're not getting your heads down you should get over to the cookhouse with the others.'

'Not hungry,' Bacon said.

Binns could not meet Dave's eye.

'Eat anyway. And drink. I've got a lot to say to you about your performance today during the ambush, Bacon, and the first thing is that you didn't drink enough.'

'I know.' Streaky nodded. 'I just didn't think of it.'

'It's easy to forget, especially when you're fighting. But in those temperatures, by the time you realize, it's often too late.'

He turned to Binns.

'What have you got to say for yourself, lad?'

Binns looked wretched. He stared at the ground and fiddled with a corner of his sleeping bag liner. Dave noticed a framed picture which Binns had evidently been looking at and shoved beneath the cot at his arrival. A pretty girl smiled out from it. She was sensibly dressed and her hair was neatly brushed. A girl-next-door type, the sort who worked in a building society.

'Sorry, Sarge,' he muttered.

'Listen, Binns, I blame myself for not gripping you earlier. It was one hell of an ambush and I was so fucking busy I couldn't get on top of you and neither could Sol. Normally I would have noticed earlier and I would have made you pull yourself together.'

'I couldn't help it, Sarge.'

'You could. It didn't happen during the mortar attack this evening, did it?'

'No. I felt a bit safer here at the base with three platoons firing back.'

'An ambush is a tough call for your first fire fight but I don't want any excuses. You fucked up badly today and you've got a lot of ground to make up now.'

Binns looked as though he was going to cry. But Dave knew he had to be merciless, for Binns's sake and everyone else's. He was glad the boy's mother, or the sweet-faced girlfriend, couldn't see him.

'We were in the shit today. We weren't just fighting for ourselves but each other, and we were fighting hard. No one could stand over you, our hands were full. And you were a dead weight. You were sitting in the Vector or puking at the back and relying on us to take care of you. That's not team playing, is it?'

'No, Sarge.'

'You've had the training, Binns. Now put it into practice. We're not going to carry you, so pull your weight or get out of this platoon.'

Binns nodded. He still could not look Dave in the eye.

'OK, Binns, go eat. And don't be surprised if all the lads tear you apart for what happened today. You'll have to work hard to make them forget it.'

Jack Binns sloped off, head hanging.

'By the way,' Dave called after him. The lad paused and turned. 'You're on shit duty for a week.'

'Yes, Sarge,' Binman said.

Dave watched him go. Over in his cot, Jamie turned over, snored for a moment and then fell silent. Dave sat down on Binns's cot and turned to Streaky Bacon. 'And how do you think you did today?'

'Did some good rap,' Bacon grinned.

'You did what?'

Streaky's smile wavered.

'Got some good flow. Good rhymes and raps in my head while I was fighting,' he said. 'I'm a rapper, see.'

Dave, who ten minutes ago had felt tired and in need of food, felt the sudden rush of energy that anger brings.

'A rapper!' he said, jumping to his feet. 'Did you say you're a rapper?'

Bacon wished for a moment he'd never heard of hip hop.

'Well…' he said, 'I try to do a bit of rap, see, and-'

'No, no, no!' said Dave, the strength of his own fury surprising him. 'You're a soldier! You didn't come to Helmand Province to rap about it. You didn't do all that training and travel all this way to sit there under fire thinking that IED rhymes with ABC or I can't see or fly with me!'

He did not miss Bacon's look of fleeting admiration for these fast rhymes. But the admiration was rapidly replaced by trepidation as Dave went on.

'You're a soldier, Bacon. That means you're here to fight not fuck about giving it MC Bacon. While we were saving your bacon, Bacon, you sat on your arse working out that yes I can and kill that man rhymes with Taliban. Is that fucking fair?'

Bacon said nothing. His deep brown eyes shifted from side to side.

'I've asked you a question,' Dave said. 'Now answer it. Is it fair for you to sit writing rap while your mates fight for their lives and yours?'

There was a pause.

'No,' Bacon said.

'No WHAT?'

'No, Sarge.'

Dave sighed and sat back down.

'OK. You wrote some fucking good rap today. Apart from that triumph, how else did you do?'

Bacon rolled his eyes upwards and straightened his body.

'Well, Sarge, I think I did OK.'

'What makes you think that?'

'I got some rounds down.'

'Well, yes, you're a soldier, that's what you're paid to do.' 'And I think I killed at least one man.'

'Oh, yeah?'

'I saw him fall. Only… the woman just may have shot him because she fired too.'

'Where was he?'

'They were everywhere except on one side and, understand see, Sarge, I thought if they ran forward we'd be completely surrounded, and that didn't make me feel good so I was watching. And when he ran forward I got him.'

Dave nodded.

'Good thinking, Bacon. How many rounds before you shot him?'

'Well, I don't know. A lot…'

'You had rounds left for him, did you?'

'Well, yes, I did, Sarge.'

'How many rounds did you have left at the end of the ambush?'

'Altogether, Sarge?'

'Yep. Bandolier, magazines, how many altogether?'

'Well, I counted. Twenty.'

'Twenty.'

'Yes, Sarge.'

'Christ. Well, that tells me a few things. First, you were firing too much, too quickly. You were told to slow it but you couldn't stop, could you?'

'Well, Sarge, I thought-'

'It was an ambush. We were under siege conditions and we'd been told to wait a long time for air support because we needed an Apache. There was no point a Harrier dropping a five-hundred-pound bomb or we'd all have been blown to Paradise. We had to wait for a fucking Apache to do some targeting because the choggies had closed in on us. If the Apache had taken another twenty minutes, we'd have been out of ammo. Because a sprog like you was just throwing it down.'

'I didn't throw it, Sarge.'

'Well did you know what you were firing at?'

'No one could see the flipflops, Sarge.'

'You should have stopped and looked at the other men. Did you watch Angus, for instance?'