Owen Sheers: The Two Worlds of Charlie F

The regimental rank and file are recruited from all over the world. Britain. America. Africa. Iraq. Afghanistan. Men. Women. Children. And it’s growing. Even now, as we speak, it’s growing. And until we stop fighting, it’s going to keep on growing. And it’s deploying too. Every day. Not to a battlefield, or to a base. But to you. To out there. We’ve all been training for that deployment. We’ve been getting ready, and now we are ready. So we hope you are too. Because we don’t live in two worlds, do we? We live in one.

Beat.

And don’t you ever forget it.

Fade to black.

ALUN LEWIS

Last night I did not fight for sleep

But lay awake from midnight while the world

Turned its slow features to the moving deep

Of darkness, till I knew that you were furled,

Beloved, in the same dark watch as I.

And sixty degrees of longitude beside

Vanished as though a swan in ecstasy

Had spanned the distance from your sleeping side.

And like to swan or moon the whole of Wales

Glided within the parish of my care:

I saw the green tide leap on Cardigan,

Your red yacht riding like a legend there,

And the great mountains Dafydd and Llewelyn,

Plynlimmon, Cader Idris and Eryri

Threshing the darkness back from head and fin,

And also the small nameless mining valley

Whose slopes are scratched with streets and

sprawling graves

Dark in the lap of firwoods and great boulders

Where you lay waiting, listening to the waves

My hot hands touched your white despondent shoulders

— And then ten thousand miles of daylight grew

Between us, and I heard the wild daws crake

In India’s starving throat; whereat I knew

That Time upon the heart can break

But love survives the venom of the snake.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author and publisher from Alun Lewis, Collected Poems (Seren, 1994)

AGC Adjutant General’s Corps ANA Afghan National Army BLESMA British Limbless Ex Service Men’s Association bluey airmail letter CamelBak water-bottle CPN Community Psychiatric Nurse ECM Electronic Countermeasure System FOB Forward Operating Base GPMG General Purpose Machine Gun Hesco block fortification device IED Improvised Explosive Device matlow member of the Navy medevac medical evacuation MST Mission Specific Training oppo best friend OPTAG Operational Training and Advisory Group Osprey body armour PB Patrol Base Pinzgauer all-terrain vehicle PRR Personal Role Radio PRU Personnel Recovery Unit 2PWRR Second Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment QE Nurses Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital Nurses QRF Quick Reaction Force RA Royal Artillery RPG Rocket-Propelled Grenade sangar duty guard duty (from a watch tower) SFSG Special Forces Support Group Snatch Protected Patrol Vehicle terp interpreter TLA Three-Letter Acronym UGL Underslung Grenade Launcher Wimik (WMIK) armoured military vehicle

Owen Sheers is the author of two poetry collections, The Blue Book (shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward Prize Best First Collection) and Skirrid Hill (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award). His debut prose work The Dust Diaries was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and won the Welsh Book of the Year 2005. In 2004 he was Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust and in 2007 Owen was a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library. Owen’s first novel, Resistance won a 2008 Hospital Club Creative Award and was shortlisted for the Writers Guild Best Book Award. Resistance has been translated into ten languages and Owen co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation released in 2011. His oratorio with Rachel Portman, The Water Diviner’s Tale, was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms 2007. Owen recently wrote the script and novelisation ( The Gospel of Us ) of The Passion National Theatre of Wales’ 72 hour site specific production in Port Talbot starring and directed by Michael Sheen. Other theatrical work includes: the radio play If I Should Go Away, Unicorns, almost developed by the Old Vic, New Voices project and Pink Mist, a verse drama for BBC Radio 4. Owen is currently writer in residence for the Welsh Rugby Union.