Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

Delta Alpha Sierra, the fifteenth hour

Gaz watched the country boy.

He shouted and gestured, attracting attention. One of the drivers responded. An APC was swung round, had a searchlight mounted. The country boy was caught first, using an arm to cover his eyes. With his other arm he pointed up the hill. The light threw his shadow on the slope, sharp all the way until it rested in the girl’s lap, a yard short of Gaz’s position in his scraped-out hide. The light edged up the hill – military grade, designed to search out infantry up to 400 metres away. Bizarrely, the Russian officer was the only one left working at the pits, rearranging the new cadavers, the rim higher than his waist. His goons stood behind him. The commander left him there and strode forward, wanting to know why the militiaman was on the slope and yelling for troops.

The searchlight wobbled, steadied, was off course, then found her. A shout of triumph from below. And it found the dogs and they cowered.

The commander might have shouted for the men to come back inside the perimeter line, might have sent his NCOs scrambling up the slope and using their rifle butts to send the militiaman back… Or might have thought that this long after it had started, and this late into the evening, it was better to let the business take its course. He would have seen what the militiaman saw: a woman, in wet clothing clinging to her body, wisps of her hair escaped from under the flattened scarf on her head, the long skirt that hid her legs. The country boy was advancing up the slope, the gang of militia coming after him. Some would have wanted to get to her because she was probably the sole witness to have survived… some because they had not been on the detail that had taken the village women away from sight and into the gully and the dried-out river-bed. Those who had formed the perimeter line duty had not enjoyed what others had… and the light fastened on her.

No chance for Gaz to ask advice… no officer to quiz, no senior guy back at the Forward Operating Base, no sergeant who had ‘been everywhere, done everything’ to challenge for a solution. His legs were locked and his breath came in gasps. He could drop the country boy but another twenty men came behind him and where the light was mounted was also a heavy machine-gun. There would be fleet-footed kids among the militiamen, tired and hungry and cold, but enlivened by this circus ring of excitement. Gaz was stiff, his gut ached with lack of food, and his mouth was dry.

He was about to speak… about to make some damn great hero speech. Waste of time, waste of effort, stuff about ‘going down fighting’. Did not speak, did not have to.

She was on her feet, brushing off his hand, a slow and considered movement. The light was full on her and the dogs hid behind her skirt.

In front of her, like a pack that had spotted prey, there was first a pause, and then the country boy was flicking at the belt of his trousers, and Gaz saw a grin playing on his face, and he would be the first to reach her.

She hitched her skirt and began to sprint down the hill and would have known it better than her hand, and chose a narrow track, made by her goats over the years. Her dogs galloped with her.

Had never had a conversation with her, only eye contact and long days of it since he had first come to the village. He had worked the duty roster with the people who did the tasking, made certain that he always went to the village to replace the batteries in the camera and to collect film. He saw her run and he saw the pack following her.

An English master at school had been besotted with Dickens: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have… Had loved those words when the teacher had declaimed them: now understood them.

The searchlight stayed on her as she ran. He did not know her name, knew only that once a happiness had bounced in her eyes, and she was a peasant girl from a remote village who had bonded with a foreign soldier and had seen it as her duty to protect him. He blanched at the depth of her loyalty, and saw her fall. Maybe her skirt caught at her ankles and tripped her, maybe a stone on the track was enough to pitch her forward. She was down and he saw the dogs had gone to her. Saw that the country boy had his trousers already flapping at his knees and saw others snatching at buttons and belts, and lost sight of her because of the crush around her, and heard a dog yelp. He was a soldier, presumed strong, and he blubbered like a child. He saw the country boy come back through the crush, lifting his trousers and feeling for his belt, and others pushing closer and making an untidy queue… He wept until no tears were left.

From the trench, the officer watched, his goons behind him. A pistol out, perhaps another movement in the pit, and another shot fired… and he went back to his digging, and the last bodies were dumped, and he shovelled earth, and was alone. And darkness fell as the searchlight by the hatch of the personnel carrier was switched off.

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“What status do you have?”

“My own status, Major Volkov, that of a witness.”

“What name?”

“I don’t have to give you a name.”

“I wish to address you. What do I call you?”

“When I was a witness I was a corporal. You can call me that – Corporal.”

“But you have an officer with you, of course you do?”

“I do not answer any questions on the mission, Major.”

“You were there?”

“I told you that I was a witness.”

“Is that a witness to a satellite transmission? Or was there a drone up even in that weather? Perhaps you dream of what you think you saw.”

“A hillside south-west of the village. I had a hide in the lip of the hill. Was there from the time you reached the village. I saw the killings, the destruction of homes, I saw…”

“You were a reconnaissance soldier? A British army reconnaissance soldier? You were by the goats?”

“By the goats, and the girl.”

“We thought them formidable troops, the British reconnaissance unit. Why were we opponents? We had the same job, killing the terrorists. Why?”

“Above my grade, Major, those decisions.”

“Were you romancing the girl?”

“I was not.”

“Just a village girl, all she was.”

“As you say, just a village girl.”

“Only a girl. What happened, it is what soldiers do.”

“You have no need to tell me. Tell a judge. If it is your defence against a war crime that she was ‘just a village girl’ then you must say so. And there were many ‘just village mothers’ and ‘just village old men’ and ‘just village children’. Say that to the judge.”

“By now they will be looking for us. A big force will be out. A cordon…”

“I do not hear the helicopters, Major.”

“And I do not, Corporal.”

Through days, nights, weeks and months it had been welling in him. No one to tell. Only the loneliness of his own company to hear his whispers so that walls and doorways would not betray him. Here, he had only his gaoler to share his thoughts. His head rocked at the thought of this man, a pace behind him and holding a pistol, mannered and courteous and without anger, but with determination. He thought of the Iranians unlucky enough to be captured, taken alive, and thought of the long passageways in the Lubyanka and the men and women who ruled there, and how prisoners, some of them he had sent there, were treated: dehumanised, broken.

“Can I say something, a truth, Corporal?”

“You don’t bargain with me. Nothing is on the table for negotiation.”

“I have shame, Corporal. I live with it and it is more persistent than the malarial microbe. For that I can take medicine, which may work. For shame I cannot find the antidote. It is guilt… I make the excuse that it is just war, that war breeds crimes. Back there I said ‘just a village girl’. I live with it, Corporal, the guilt and the shame.”