Harry Parker - Anatomy of a Soldier

‘And stay hydrated,’ he called after them.

We were on the helicopter landing site in the centre of an open area, surrounded by protective walls. It was dusk. One of the men jogged over to a football left by a wall and they kicked it to each other as they went back to their beds.

BA5799 pulled on my headset and positioned my microphone over his lips with two fingers.

‘You ready?’ he said. A handful of men knelt or stood around him; one nodded and BA5799 pushed my pressel. He spoke and I converted, encrypted and sent his voice: ‘HELLO, THREE ZERO BRAVO, THIS IS THREE ZERO ALPHA, RADIO CHECK. OVER.’

The other man’s lips moved in his microphone. I received, decrypted and emitted it through my headset into BA5799’s ear: ‘THREE ZERO BRAVO, OKAY. OVER.’

‘THREE ZERO ALPHA, OKAY. OUT,’ BA5799 sent back and looked up. ‘Thanks, Sarnt Dee,’ he said. ‘You good, Corporal Monk?’

‘Still initialising, sir.’

‘No problem. Has everyone got enough spare batteries? Likely to be a long one tomorrow.’

Soon all the radios around me had initialised. I sent and received until BA5799 was certain none of us were corrupted and our connections were clear. He thanked everyone and walked back through a gap in the blast walls to a small courtyard of compound walls.

He ducked under a washing line and entered a small room carved out of the wall. Inside were two green camp beds covered with mosquito nets. At the back of the room were empty ration boxes and two black grips, a pile of paperbacks and an out-of-date calendar. He dragged one of the beds out of the trapped heat into the evening air and sat down on it.

He leant his body armour against the foot of the bed and placed his helmet next to it. He opened his magazine pouches, tested the ammunition and picked up his rifle, pulled back the cocking handle and looked in through the breech. There was a bottle of water under the sleeping bag and he fished it out and drank. The first stars had appeared and he looked at them. Then he put the day-sack down and reached in with his thumb and finger to twist my switch. 10010101111100000.

*

000001111001101. It was colder and dark. My digital display read 0453 and my headset indicated that I had finished initialising. My microphone protruded from under BA5799’s helmet. He pulled the drawstring on the day-sack and my body and spare batteries drew together with a bladder of water, a smoke grenade and a green plastic bag of ammunition.

He clipped the lid shut so my antenna stood upright, then swung the bag up onto his back and pulled the straps tight. My pressel was attached by his shoulder. He lifted his left hand up and depressed it. I emitted: ‘ZERO, THIS IS THREE ZERO ALPHA, RADIO CHECK. OVER,’ he said.

‘ZERO, OKAY. OVER,’ I received.

‘OKAY. OUT.’

We were near the front gate. Heavy-wheeled vehicles had churned the ground to powder in deep trenches that led up to an opening in the wall, spanned by a spiral of concertina wire. BA5799 stood to one side of a single file of waiting men, all helmeted and weighed down by equipment. Weapons jutted from their shadows. Antennas and aerials swayed and night-vision goggles cantilevered off helmets. Cigarettes glowed and were thrown into the dust. A couple of men yawned and BA5799 walked along the line to the front. One said good morning to him; BA5799 recognised his voice and returned the greeting.

A squat man approached through the dark, holding his rifle down at his side.

‘All ready when you are, sir,’ he said, looking back at the line of men. ‘Twenty-three including you.’

‘Thanks, Sergeant Dee,’ BA5799 said. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead, boss.’

‘That bad?’

‘Someone has to make sure we’ve got enough bombs and bullets.’

‘I’ll just log out with the ops room.’ BA5799 activated me. ‘HELLO ZERO, THIS IS THREE ZERO ALPHA, MY CALLSIGN NOW READY TO MOVE DOWN ROUTE HAMMER. OVER?’

I broadcast the metallic reply in his ear, ‘ZERO, ROGER. JUST CLEARING WITH HIGHER. WAIT. OUT.’

We waited. BA5799 had been busy since he’d unzipped the mosquito net and tugged his kit on, but his nerves were surging now. He thought about the mission again: where he’d be and what else might happen, about his teams moving off down the corridors of his plan and what he needed to coordinate. He hadn’t slept well and his eyes scratched as he blinked.

I received: ‘THREE ZERO ALPHA, ZERO. YOU CAN MOVE NOW. OVER.’

‘ROGER. OUT,’ I sent. BA5799 puffed his cheeks and silently exhaled as we moved up to the front. He slotted into the line and tapped the shoulder of the man ahead. ‘We’re on, Corporal Carr,’ he said.

The man in front nodded and whispered up the line, ‘Pssst, Jez, good to go, mate.’

The concertina wire was pulled aside and the lead soldier disappeared around the wall and up onto the road. The next paused, then followed him out.

The line shuffled forward and each man waited before stepping through the gap. And soon they were all moving onto the road. Those in front had already spaced out into two staggered files. They were dark shadows against the pale road. BA5799 could tell each of his men by his gait. He smiled, then spun around and saw the single files lengthen as the rest of his platoon appeared behind him.

We passed the high watchtower at the corner of the camp and headed into the horizontal lines of landscape, receding into the night away from safety. It felt hostile, but this is what it’s all about, BA5799 thought, the reason he’d joined up. His soldiers bristled with weapons and moved without orders. They knew the plan, what to do when the plan changed — they knew how to switch to sudden violence.

His breathing deepened under the weight of the kit and condensation formed on the gauze of my microphone.

Then the men in front knelt down, and the action rippled along the line until they were all static. They unbent metal detectors and moved into position so the first four were in a box formation. They started to sweep the detectors over the road. Behind him another team stepped over a ditch and disappeared into the dark fields. BA5799 flicked down night-vision goggles to watch them enact his plan.

It was slow work and the men in front were careful. If the detectors alarmed, they stopped and lay down prone so they could prod with rods or dig at the road with their hands. A band of light bled from the horizon and BA5799 could see his team across the field. They had turned and now walked parallel to the road we were on.

I was mostly silent but he sent updates of our progress as they passed buildings. I received terse acknowledgements. One team asked him if they could proceed through a derelict compound and I sent a message telling them to stay to the south of it.

We moved slowly over a bridge and BA5799 was relieved to have cleared the first obstacle. The land seemed less malevolent as the day brightened and light gave perspective to the shadows. We weren’t alone: a group of farmers had appeared with the dawn. They leant on their tools and stared, then went back to work and ignored the soldiers. Another team pushed out, as BA5799 had demonstrated on the model, and he watched them move diagonally past the farmers towards a compound.

Only eight men were on the road now. The rest had dissolved into the fields, using ditches and hedges and crumbling walls for cover. BA5799 activated me to keep in contact with them and held a picture of their positions in his head.

The four men continued to wave their detectors across the road, which soon squeezed between two high-walled compounds. BA5799 was tense. The team slowed as they channelled through them, stopping at the smallest signal and scraping the ground with their fingertips, gently feeling for triggers or batteries or bombs. They swept up and down the vertical walls, knowing that danger could be hidden anywhere.