Owen Sheers - The Two Worlds of Charlie F

DanielYes. Of course. I love you.

SarahI love you too.

The line goes dead. They both look at their handsets for a moment. Daniel hands the sat phone to Frank. As Frank dials, Daniel walks downstage.

Just before he speaks we see Michelle take Sarah’s place to answer Frank’s call. She carries a baby with one hand, holds the phone in her other. We don’t hear their conversation.

DanielSometimes I think we say more with our silences than we do with our words. But it has to be that way. And not just for security. If she knew what I was doing, well, it would be hell for her. But I understand it must be just as difficult not knowing. But what can we do? It’s still worth it — hearing her voice, speaking to Lucy. It’s about staying in touch, isn’t it? About staying in contact.

As soon as Daniel says the word ‘contact’ —

All Soldiers( shouted ) CONTACT!

The sound of small arms fire, mortars, UGLs and RPGs .

The Soldiers scramble for helmets and weapons and begin laying down rounds in a defensive shoot.

Frank tries to turn off the sat phone, but fails. Michelle is left listening to the contact. She shouts Frank’s name into the phone but her voice is drowned by the gunfire .

The sound of battle stops and a single spot lights Michelle.

MichelleI had to listen to that contact for over five minutes. Explosions. Bullets. Shouting. It was two weeks before I heard from him again.

Fade to black .

SCENE NINE — CONTACT

Charlie, without his prosthetic leg, sits in a wheelchair opposite a Psychologist. As they talk, the silhouette of a man with a Vallon mine-detector occasionally passes them.

CharlieWhat’s it like? Jeez, well, kinda like everything you imagine. And not. I mean, when I first got out there it was like I was watching Apocalypse Now. I didn’t know where to look, where to go, what was dangerous, what was safe. You come off the Chinook and the heat hits you like a punch in the face. And the smell. Shit and dust. It was the first time I’d heard a proper weapons system, outside the firing range. And, I mean, it’s being discharged at you. Crack — thump. Crack — thump. The crack of the bullet snapping the air, then the thump of the weapon. And everything is reverbing, so yeah, it wasn’t so much confusing as disorienting. Because I mean, we’re well trained but we’re pretty much straight off the fucking plane here.

PsychologistAnd what about your first contact? How did you find that?

CharlieWell, it kinda found us really. They attacked our compound and, I won’t lie, Doc, it was fucking great. It was like, finally, we get to do our job. We’d had weeks of just gash sweeps, sangar duty, that kinda shit. So to finally have a defensive shoot — it was the best day of my military career. It was simple, you know? They brought the fight to us. We won, they lost. We suffered no casualties, but lots of our guys got confirmed kills. So yeah, it felt really, really good.

The following speeches are projected on to the gauze.

RogerYou can’t tell how you’ll react. When that first RPG went across our bonnet me and Jimmy just looked at each other, then started laughing. A month later he was dead, killed by one.

FrankYour training kicks in. There’s so much adrenalin the body takes over. And you’ve got rounds coming the other way too, at you, so yeah, I was just trying to stay alive.

SimiIt was the kids that were my deepest surprise. On Telic 8. Coming at you with automatic weapons, petrol bombs. Eleven, twelve years old. And you have to make that choice. It’s you or them. You fire some rounds over their heads, and you hope they run away. But if they don’t, then …

RichardI loved my first contact. I was in an orchard with my mate Parry. A sniper’s round just missed my head. I felt it brush past my face. We didn’t have our gats, so we ran for it, back to the camp, with the whole orchard being thrown up around us. And Parry, he starts singing from behind me, ‘Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.’ Just over and over. When we got our rifles, we just ran straight back into it. And we were, like, is this what we’re meant to be doing? But yeah, it’s a real buzz, it is.

PsychologistAnd how did that experience change for you? Over the tours?

CharlieWell the war changed, didn’t it? Afghanistan changed. I mean, on Herrick 5 it was Wild West stuff, bandit country. Ten dollar Taliban doing Beirut unloads. A lot of spray and pray, shoot and scoot. But by Herrick 14 it was proper guerilla warfare. Seasoned warriors. Giving us come-ons, planting IEDs fucking everywhere. I mean, Sangin was IED central. Low metal content, infra-red switches, strapping bombs to donkeys. They were even planting decoys so they could watch how we examined them. You had to respect your enemy. Were they honourable tactics? No. Was it effective guerilla warfare? Yes. I mean, the guy who did this to me did a really, really good job. He killed two incredibly good soldiers and took myself and JJ out of action. It was a legacy IED, laid a while ago. But the batteries — those batteries had been changed regularly, to keep it active.

Roger, Frank, Daniel and Richard enter as a patrol in full combat gear. They slowly move in formation downstage.

PsychologistWere you out on patrol often?

CharlieYeah. I mean, you’ve got to take the fight to them, haven’t you? You can’t just sit back in the compound with your thumb firmly up your ass. But I’ll tell you, Doc, that first time I stepped outside the gate, my mouth went dry. I had to take a sip from my CamelBak straight away because … well, we were suddenly outside our comfort zone. You know that once you’re out that gate anything could happen, at anytime. And that it probably will. Every day we were playing Afghan roulette.

RogerWe’d snake, spread out, change our routes. We had two Vallon men on most patrols, and ECMs. But sometimes there was nothing you could do. There were some bad days. Once, in the same afternoon, we lost two blokes and an interpreter. But there were good days too, you know, when you’re seeing them drop.

FrankWe’d always be watching the atmospherics. If you see the women and children start to leave, or some bloke who might be dicking you, we’d go firm, straight away. Take no chances.

DanielYou’ve got your eyes down all the time, trying to follow the Vallon man’s route exactly, trying to step in the other man’s prints. But then you’re also trying to look for firing points, or murder holes. And trying to command. There’s a lot of tension. Then the next day we’d be at a Shura, a gathering of the local elders. And for all I knew the hand I was shaking had planted the bomb that blew up one of my boys the week before.

AngusComing back from one patrol we saw a leg in a tree. It was a come-on. I sent an Afghan National to investigate and sure enough the Taliban started firing grenades. We still got the leg. It belonged to a marine from J Company, killed the week before.

RichardOn my second tour we never saw them, not once. It was like fighting ghosts. You might see a muzzle flash, a puff of smoke, but that was it. When we did night ops sometimes they’d communicate by howling like animals, like dogs. That could be pretty scary. I took a Pashtun language course before I went out. That helped loads. I could talk to people when we were out on patrol. Sometimes they’d tell us where the Taliban were, or warn us off certain routes. I reckon that language course saved us more than our Ospreys.