Harry Parker - Anatomy of a Soldier

‘I hope this works, boss. Our first chance to really get at them.’

‘Let’s go,’ BA5799 said. He stepped towards the front of the line, passed the lead soldier and glanced back at his men. He gave a nod to the man guarding the gate, who pulled the wire aside. He made to step off but the man behind tapped my shoulder panel.

‘Sir,’ he whispered, ‘I thought you said I was point man.’

‘I’ll go first, Rifleman Lewis,’ BA5799 told him. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s your turn.’

‘But you said in orders you’d be second in the order-of-march. I should lead, we don’t need you at the front.’

‘Well, I changed my mind,’ he said and smiled. ‘Stay well spaced out and keep me covered, Lewie. You’ve got my back.’

BA5799 reached over his rifle and dragged the cocking handle back and the sound of other weapons being made ready rippled down the line. He stepped past the wire and out onto the road.

He led the platoon under the dark watchtower and out into the gloom. He turned off the road and they walked parallel to it through a field and towards the remains of houses. His head swivelled above me, his face fixed under the dark rim of his helmet.

The compounds were destroyed and he skirted around craters and past crumbled walls. The buildings were no more than fifty years old but now were ancient ruins in the night and he knew the weapons that had accelerated their return to dust. The compounds had been abandoned and he thought of the destruction required to create peace.

He twisted his head and looked out to his left at the black strip of trees bisecting a field and then walked backwards to check on the man behind him and the other soldiers snaking through the open country. He held his rifle across me in two hands and its telescopic sight bumped against my front plate. He passed around a corner, stopped and lowered himself down. He beckoned and the man behind handed him a detector.

And then we were moving again. He pushed his rifle back on its sling so it dangled off me and I pressed down on his collarbone as he swept the detector over the track ahead, its red lights indicating what was below the ground. He focused on the task: on the track, on his route — which he held as an image in his head — on the radio emitting in his ear, and the detector in front of us. All the time his jawbone protruded above me, his teeth clamped.

We moved on into the murky night and the still trees. Insects grated around us and the crops stroked his legs. He lowered the night-vision goggles on his helmet above me and they swivelled as he scanned the landscape. The tension built in his arm as it waved the detector beside me, his damp combat shirt rucking up so that his lower back was bare. He stopped and the bottom of my protective plate pushed into his thigh as he knelt. He let the men compress together and waited for a message that the callsign was complete. And then we moved on, deeper into the countryside.

He led them through tracks he knew well and down others that were less familiar and then on into a field he’d never crossed. He collapsed the detector and the man behind strapped it to the side of his day-sack. He walked on without it and tried to ignore the humid night air and the weight of me making his shoulders feel hollow.

*

Panic grew slowly as the depthless features around him didn’t match the route he’d memorised and then he risked a path because it must be that way. It led to a wall that shouldn’t have been there and he swore under his breath and didn’t know where he was. He thought of the men behind, trusting him and following him blindly into the night.

He pulled a compass from my front pouch and watched the fluorescent needle floating in the dark. It settled in the wrong direction and he swore again. He slid it back and his head turned above me as he tried to orientate himself but the shadows bounced back distorted blind spots he couldn’t decipher. He pumped his hand down and the following soldiers crouched.

BA5799 lay flat on the path and my breastplate rested in the fine dirt. He pulled out his map and flicked on a torch and bent over it.

The man behind moved up and whispered, ‘Sir, wait. Let me get ahead and cover you.’

‘Thanks, Rifleman Lewis,’ BA5799 said quietly, knowing he shouldn’t risk using the torch in the open but not wanting his men to suspect he was lost.

‘You okay?’ the rifleman said as he moved past and knelt down in front.

‘Fine, just a quick nav check, Lewie.’

‘There’s no rush, boss.’

Another man made his way along the line. He squatted down beside BA5799 and rested his hand on my yoke. ‘This is the wrong way, sir,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Sergeant Dee. Just getting back on track.’

‘I reckon the FRV’s about six hundred metres to our right,’ the man said, squinting down the track.

‘Yup, looks like it,’ BA5799 said and turned the map to show him. ‘We’re here,’ he said and dust floated through the thin torch beam. ‘If we cross this irrigation ditch we should see the tree line.’

‘We’re going to be early anyway, sir. Take your time.’

And then the map was back in my pouch and BA5799’s body rotated in me as he stood, pushing through the weight of his kit.

He used the detector again and led the men over the ditch and away from the wall. He waved it from side to side over the path and then it spiked, the lights rushing to fill the display. He took a step back and he waved at the men to go firm. They waited behind us.

BA5799 was lying flat again and I was against the ground. He reached out with straight arms and scraped down with a metal rod. He hated this, and he stretched his fingertips into the hole he’d created. His dog tags had worked up his shirt as he walked and they slipped out and now dangled on me, glinting matte in the darkness.

He twisted and I scuffed on a stone as he picked up the detector and awkwardly moved it over the hole and its lights flashed again. He put the detector back down and continued to dig, gritting his teeth at the awkward position and the day-sack pulling off me. His neck strained and his jugular throbbed against my collar as he worked.

He kept digging but found only bits of stone and debris. And then he held the detector over the hole again to make certain, the base of his helmet pressing into me as he peered forward. The red lights didn’t jump and he stood, sweat glistening on his face. He held a thumb up to the man behind, stepped around the rubble and walked on.

We stopped in front of a wood and BA5799 pressed the radio switch. ‘Zero, this is Three Zero Alpha,’ he whispered. ‘My callsign now fifty metres short of the FUP. We’re going to clear it and then occupy, over.’

The metallic response sounded in his earpiece and then we were moving into the dark foliage. The branches scratched over me as we pressed through and he worried about the noise and stepped carefully in the dark below.

At the other side of the trees he peered through the night-vision that glowed green against his eye. He raised his hand and motioned a team of men forward and they slid out of the wood and down into a dry ditch. They unfolded detectors and started to sweep the sides of the hollow, fanning out to an old sluice gate. A dog barked in the distance and BA5799’s stomach muscles contracted in me.

Once it was cleared, the other soldiers peeled into the ditch and BA5799 lay against the forward edge below an overhang, my side panel pressing into the baked mud and exposed roots. His men waited either side of us. He sent a message on the radio that they were in position with the target a hundred metres to his front. He confirmed he would wait until H-hour.

The dog stopped barking and the soldiers crouched together in silence. They looked at each other: dark shapes with dull eyes, housed in armour and bristling with weapons and antennas. BA5799 thought how exposed they were in the ditch, thousands of miles from home, and grinned at the absurdity of it all. Only their training and their trust in one another allowed them to be here.