Harry Parker - Anatomy of a Soldier

Another team moved around the buildings, checking them. Once they’d finished, one of the men walked over.

‘All clear, sir,’ he said. ‘Don’t look lived in.’

‘Thanks,’ BA5799 said and then he spoke into me. ‘ZERO, THREE ZERO ALPHA, THAT’S ROUTE HAMMER UP TO LIMA THREE THREE AND THREE FOUR CLEARED. MY THREE ONE CHARLIE CALLSIGN NOW COMPLETE AT MIKE ONE THREE, GRID 824 463. OVER.’

‘ZERO, ROGER. MANY THANKS, OUT TO YOU. HELLO, FOUR ZERO ALPHA, THIS IS ZERO, ACKNOWLEDGE. OVER.’

‘FOUR ZERO, ROGER. MOVING NOW. OUT.’

The team ahead continued to sweep the road, and we were followed by four large-wheeled trucks, covered in armour and with small, thick windows in the cab. On top, a helmet barely showed behind heavy machine guns that scanned across the landscape. BA5799 watched them come down the route and hoped we hadn’t missed anything that would detonate under their wheels.

The vehicles approached and then stopped. I received:

‘HELLO THREE ZERO ALPHA, THIS IS FOUR ZERO ALPHA. I’M GOING STATIC HERE UNTIL YOU’VE CLEARED YOUR AREA. OVER.’

‘ROGER, SHOULDN’T BE LONG NOW, TWO HUNDRED METRES OR SO TO GO. ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THREE ONE CHARLIE’S LOCATION AT MIKE ONE THREE? OVER,’ I sent.

‘YES, I’VE GOT VISUAL. OUT.’

‘HELLO ZERO, TWO ZERO ALPHA, I’M LEAVING YOUR LOCATION NOW. OVER.’ A new callsign had entered the network.

‘ZERO, ROGER. OUT.’

Even though the milky sun was still large on the horizon, it was hot. BA5799 sweated into my headband and his ear was red in my plastic earpiece. On one knee at the edge of the road, he took a map from a pouch on the front of his body armour and pulled a GPS from his pocket. He looked up at the features around him and confirmed his position.

A few hundred metres ahead, trees lined the track to a crossroads where a gated building stood in one corner. Beyond, walls divided the fields into a maze of rectangles.

‘Corporal Carr, you can stop there. This is the eighty-third easting,’ BA5799 said to the man in front. ‘Good effort. Once Six Platoon are through, we’ll move back and secure Lima Three Three.’

‘Roger, sir.’ The man looked relieved and turned to his team. ‘Go firm, lads. Jez, that’s far enough. Well done, mucker.’

BA5799 stood and gazed back down the road. Behind the vehicles, a line of soldiers floated on the mirages. ‘CHARLIE CHARLIE ONE, THIS IS THREE ZERO ALPHA. ROUTE HAMMER NOW SECURE TO THE EIGHTY-THIRD EASTING,’ he said into my microphone. ‘ZERO, ACKNOWLEDGE. OVER.’

My emission was lost in the atmosphere and there was a distorted response: ‘NO, SAY AGAIN, YOU’RE DIFFICULT. OVER.’

‘ZERO, THIS IS FOUR ZERO. I RELAY. FROM THREE ZERO ALPHA: ROUTE HAMMER NOW CLEARED TO THE EIGHTY-THIRD EASTING. OVER.’

‘ZERO, ROGER. THAT’S CLEAR. MANY THANKS; OUT TO YOU. HELLO TWO ZERO, ACKNOWLEDGE FOUR ZERO’S LAST. OVER.’

‘ROGER, MOVING WEST ALONG HAMMER NOW. WILL LET YOU KNOW WHEN I’M IN POSITION. OUT.’

The truck’s engine pulsed as they stopped beside us and men dismounted to fan out across the fields and surround the crossroads. BA5799 waved to the man up on the truck.

The man leant out and pulled an ear defender away. ‘You didn’t find anything, Tom?’ he said over the engine noise.

‘No, Dan. Most of the road’s in sight of the camp, though.’

‘True, let’s hope it continues.’ The man looked towards the junction.

A team of riflemen stepped down from the back of the truck. ‘Morning, boss,’ one of them said as he filed up to us. ‘Our turn for a bit of tiptoe.’

‘Morning, Rifleman Plunkett, we wouldn’t want to hog all the fun,’ BA5799 said, then walked back to the two buildings that straddled the road.

I continued to play transmissions in BA5799’s ear as the other stations of the network pushed farther up the road. He arranged the men around the buildings and moved between them, talking them through the countryside in front and where they were in relation to one another. He used me to tell the network that his teams were now in position.

He knelt in an area of shade, drank from the tube over his shoulder and removed his helmet. His hair was matted against his skull and he scratched his scalp and adjusted my headband before clipping it back on. We waited. The sun was high, the air vibrating. He looked ahead at the platoon that was moving slowly through the junction, checking in ditches and sluices and spreading wide to clear the compounds. The trucks marked their progress as they followed. BA5799 was glad that his part of the task was done for now.

He walked between the men and joked with them. They talked about the operation and how long it was likely to take. He said he didn’t know, but the logistics convoy had left and was now heading east.

He dropped into a ditch beside another man. ‘You okay, Rifleman Johns?’

‘Not too bad, boss. What do you make of that?’ The man pointed over his machine gun, propped on its bipod in front of him. ‘That geezer just rode down the road from the north.’

BA5799 held his rifle up and looked through the sight. In the distance a man sat upright and still on a motorbike. He wore a black turban and black boots that were planted on either side of the bike. His arms were crossed as he watched.

‘Looks dodgy as sin,’ BA5799 said.

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Keep an eye on him.’ Then he pressed me: ‘THREE ONE CHARLIE, THIS IS THREE ZERO ALPHA. OVER.’

‘THREE ONE, SEND. OVER.’

‘CAN YOU SEE THE FIGHTING-AGED MALE ON THE BIKE? OVER.’

‘YES, JUST APPEARED FROM VICINITY OF OXFORD. HE’S UNARMED BUT HE’S WATCHING THE JUNCTION. ABOUT THREE HUNDRED METRES FROM MY LOCATION. OVER.’

‘ROGER, KEEP EYES ON. OUT.’

BA5799 looked again through his sight at the figure framed in the black circle and swore under his breath. It could be nothing, he thought, but then he activated me again. ‘HELLO, FOUR ZERO ALPHA, THIS IS THREE ZERO ALPHA, BE AWARE YOU’RE BEING WATCHED BY A LONE MALE IN THE VICINITY OF COMPOUND MIKE TWO FOUR. OVER.’

‘FOUR ZERO ALPHA, ROGER. OVER.’

‘THREE ZERO ALPHA, THE FARMERS IN MY AREA ARE ALSO MOVING AWAY, NOT GOOD ATMOSPHERICS. OVER,’ BA5799 said, as he watched the farmers in the fields to his right.

‘ROGER, NOT GOOD AT ALL. HELLO, ALL TWO ZERO CALLSIGNS, STAY ALERT, LOOKS LIKE WE’RE BEING WATCHED. OUT.’

BA5799 stood and walked up onto the road but the rifleman called back, ‘He’s buggering off, sir.’

BA5799 turned just as the man on the bike skidded his rear wheel around and a cone of dust lifted as he rode away. ‘Keep your eyes open and give me a shout if he returns.’

BA5799 waited with a group of his men. They fidgeted in the heat and sweat dripped from their noses. He took off his day-sack, twisted a clip and replaced my battery. Somebody complained it was taking forever, and BA5799 said it would take as long as it took; this was a dangerous part of the operation.

He listened absent-mindedly to the messages I emitted as the other platoons used the network. BA5799 updated the men around him, telling them how Six Platoon had nearly cleared Cambridge and were starting up Hammer. He explained that the road narrowed beyond the crossroads and they had to direct the trucks through the tight sections. A soldier grunted about rubbish driving.

*

They ducked in unison at the bang. BA5799 looked around at the crossroads and saw the explosion mushrooming up into the sky. The sound echoed through the fields and a bird flapped away. They’d all heard explosions before, but one of them still cursed in the silence after it.

‘Cover your arcs,’ BA5799 said. ‘And look for firing points, there could be follow-up.’ He stepped onto the road, his hand poised over my pressel. There was nothing he could do; he was too far away. He hated this moment. He could hear the shouts of the men up the road, trying to make sense of the situation.