Harry Parker: Anatomy of a Soldier

‘Pass me a battery.’

After more scraping the bag lifted and we moved off.

When we stopped for the third time, the sound of running water covered the noise of the trowel. The bag was unzipped. They lifted out the second of us and then only I was left. They were framed in the opening of the bag, crouched over and digging at the pale surface of a road. They attached a battery to the second of us and then lowered it into the ground.

One man lay flat and scooped rubble over the hole. The other went down to the canal, where the water turned white as it dropped under the bridge. When he returned, he poured water over the digging and flattened the mud with the palm of his hand, smoothing it flush with the surface of the road. Then he came back to the bag and beads of sweat showed on his face as he zipped it closed. It was dark again and I was alone in the bag. We moved off.

The rhythm of the walk became slow and cautious. Soon the men were crawling and vegetation scratched against the canvas around me. We stopped again and one of them whispered. ‘We are too close, Aktar,’ he said. ‘I can see their watchtower. Just there.’

‘I know,’ came the hissed reply. ‘We need to get as close as we can.’

‘This is too much. They can see in the dark, they have machines that can feel our heat. We need to go back.’

‘Keep going. A bit farther and we will be hidden. I know this ground.’

We moved again. The sound of them snaking forward vibrated through the bag. Then we stopped.

‘Here is good, Latif. Keep low.’

The zip rumbled open and I was pulled out and laid on the ground. The sky was a dome of stars. We were in a slight hollow of dry earth with sparse grass. The men panted with the effort now. One was propped on an elbow and scooped dirt away to create the space for me. The other shuffled up onto a rise and stared into the gloom. They were both tense.

‘There is no movement,’ the man murmured as he pushed himself back down from the edge. ‘Be careful, Latif. We cannot rush. It is not worth making a mistake.’

As he dug my hole, he recited under his breath, ‘God is greatest. God is greatest. God is greatest.’ The mantra focused his attention away from the danger and onto my grave.

‘You must control yourself, Latif.’ The other man reached out and held the hand he was digging with. Their eyes met. ‘Control your fear. You’ve gone deep enough already. Give me the battery.’

He fumbled around in his pocket and handed a square battery to the other man, who pushed it into my connector. Electricity tingled in my wires but I was not yet a circuit. He rolled over, awkwardly pulled tape from his pocket and wrapped it around my battery. Then he slid towards the hole and carefully lifted me in. He arranged my components. He put the round part of me, the part with the potential, at the bottom, and then placed the long thin metal strips, my trigger, on top, nearest the surface.

His sweat dripped onto me as he worked. He replaced the dirt, each new handful reducing the starlight until finally the ink-blue aperture closed and I was in the dark. The men moved around on the surface, pushing and pulling the soil over me. Water was poured on the ground and soaked through the dust, turning it to mud that oozed around me. Soon the movements stopped and the men who made me must have crawled away.

*

I waited in the blackness. The mud around me dried and solidified in the heat and I was encased in earth. There was a daily rise and fall of temperature, but otherwise nothing.

Eventually I felt vibrations — the rhythm of walking — that were faint at first but then converged towards me. A weight pressed down. The dry mud above me flexed, cracked down and pushed my metal strips together. A circuit was created that filled my wires instantly.

I was alive.

The metal rod at the heart of me detonated, a controlled high-explosive force that triggered the mix in me to react.

I functioned.

I was taken from a drawer by a trauma nurse. He placed me on a stainless-steel trolley with other medical items. I was sterile and sealed in a plastic bag. He wheeled the trolley into an operating theatre. People cleaned surfaces and checked equipment. They were tense. In the room next door, through Perspex sheeting, men in medical gowns scrubbed their hands.

A man in desert uniform came in with a clipboard. ‘Right, he’s in the air now,’ he said. ‘PEDRO callsign has picked him up from District South. Mechanism is IED versus foot soldier. Nine-liner still stands. One Category A; zap number BA5799. Traumatic below left knee amputation, difficulty breathing and severe blood loss. They’ve already had to resuscitate, possible collapsed lung. ETA is eight minutes. When I get a sitrep from the helicopter I’ll come back.’

‘Okay, thanks, Jack,’ a woman said. She wore a blue gown and had a mask around her neck. ‘Let’s prep for reception. Kirsty, how’s plasma and bloods going?’

‘Fine, Colonel, O POS prepped,’ a nurse said as she walked across the room with bags of yellow plasma. ‘But I’ll test when he’s in. More in the fridge if needed.’

‘Good. Tim, get that equipment closer.’

The trolley I was on moved towards a bed.

‘Sounds like we’ll have to CAT scan when he’s stable. Is Dr Richmond up yet?’

‘On his way, Colonel.’

The man with the clipboard came back. ‘PEDRO has had to defib him three times; currently no output. Will let you know any update. Not looking good, I’m afraid.’

The tension left the room. One of the men peeled rubber gloves from his hands and threw them in a bin. ‘Not another one.’

‘Stay with it, everyone,’ the woman said and looked at the clock.

There was silence. The bed, covered in green plastic, lay empty. One of the nurses pushed buttons on a machine that hung from the ceiling. Another leant against a cabinet and doodled with a biro.

The man with the clipboard looked through the door again. ‘PEDRO still saying no output,’ he said, ‘though they had him back for a while — ETA two minutes.’

‘Let’s hope he can pull through. Normal drills. Output or not, let’s see what we can do for him. Tim, you’d better get out there with the reception party.’

A man entered from the scrub room stretching on rubber gloves and fastening his gown.

‘Morning, Peter. You’ve been briefed?’ the woman said.

‘Just dropped in at the ops room, Jack brought me up to speed. More of the same, it looks like.’

The wait continued. The minute hand tapped around on a clock above a whiteboard, divided into black squares and filled with information. And then the distant drone of a helicopter grew in the room until the walls of the temporary building started to vibrate. The pitch changed, descended and became a constant whistle.

‘Here we go,’ she said.

*

Double doors banged open and the sound of hurrying footsteps and urgent voices came down a corridor until the stretcher with you on was carried into the room. Men and women crowded around. One held a bag of liquid above you and another had a helmet with a tinted visor and a flash with stars and stripes on.

‘He’s sixty over thirty,’ he said, ‘been shocked four times in transit. We’ve given him a shot of adrenaline.’

‘What’s his output like now?’

‘I think he was conscious for a second while we were landing but he’s out again now. No morphine on the ground as they suspected a collapsed lung. No time to intubate yet.’

‘Okay, let’s intubate — quick as you can, Tim,’ the woman said.

I was picked up and the plastic peeled away from my packaging. A man fed a laryngoscope into your mouth and another lifted your head back. Your tongue was held open and I was pushed into you. Your mouth had dirt in it and a blade of grass. I slid past the laryngoscope that directed me into you. I scraped down through you, grazing your voice box, past your glottis, down through your trachea, until I reached the top of your lungs. One of them was smaller and collapsed. A nurse inflated my balloon cuff that puffed out and held me inside you.