Harry Parker: Anatomy of a Soldier

My serial number is 6545-01-522. I was unpacked from a plastic case, pulled open, checked and reassembled. A black marker wrote BA5799 O POS on me and I was placed in the left thigh pocket of BA5799’s combat trousers. I stayed there; the pocket was rarely unfastened.

I spent eight weeks, two days and four hours in the pocket. I wasn’t needed yet. I slid against BA5799’s thigh, back and forth, back and forth, mostly slowly but sometimes quickly, bouncing around. And there was noise: bangs and cracks, high-pitched whines, shouts of excitement and anger.

One day I was submerged in stagnant water for an hour.

I went in vehicles, tracked and wheeled, winged and rotored. I was soaked in soapy water then hung out to dry on a clothesline and did nothing for a day.

At 0618 on 15 August, when I was sliding alongside BA5799’s thigh, I was lifted into the sky and turned over. And suddenly I was in the light. There was dust and confusion and shouting. I was on the ground beside him. He was face down; he was incomplete. I was beside him as rocks and mud fell around us.

I was in the dust as a dark red liquid zigzagged towards me over the cracked mud. I was there when no one came and he was alone and couldn’t move. I was still there as fear and pathetic hopelessness gripped BA5799, as he was turned over and two fingers reached into his mouth, as his chest was pumped up and down and they forced air into his lungs.

I was picked up by a slippery hand, fumbled back to the ground, then picked up again. I was pulled open by panicked fingers and covered in the thick liquid. I was placed on BA5799. I was turned. I tightened. I closed around his leg until his pulse pushed up against me. And he grimaced and whimpered through gritted teeth. I was wound tighter, gripping his thigh; stopping him bleed out into the dust.

I clung to him while he was lifted onto a stretcher and he bit deeply into the arm of a man who carried him, when he no longer made any noise. I clung to him as we boarded the helicopter. I was wound again then, and gripped him harder.

I clung to him as we flew low across the fields and glinting irrigation ditches and the wind rushed around the helicopter, when he pleaded with God to save him and metal pads were placed on his chest and his body jolted. And I clung to him when the machine read no output, when there was no pulse against me.

I was there when they ran across to the helicopter and took us into the cool of the hospital.

I was there when the doctors looked worried. I clung to him when he came back, when he had output and his faltering heart pulsed again. I was still there when they hung the bag of blood above BA5799 and they cut the remains of his leg away.

And then I was unwound and loosened and I was no longer there; BA5799 no longer needed me.

My serial number is 6545-01-522. I was at the bottom of a surgical bin and then I was burnt.

I was placed on a broken pallet with three other identical bags of fertiliser outside a shop in the village of Howshal Nalay.

I had been on the pallet for two weeks when Faridun came on his green bicycle. He greeted the shopkeeper and they started to haggle. Then Faridun handed him money and the shopkeeper lifted me onto the bike’s pannier. I sagged over its metal bars that pushed into my plastic skin and he fastened me down with orange twine from the shop. Faridun shared a joke with the man, then swung his leg over the crossbar and we rode away.

Faridun cycled us out of the village on the exposed road; a raised, sand-coloured backbone running through dusty green fields. The bike’s buckled rear wheel squeaked below me as we weaved past potholes left by the winter rains.

He sighed when he saw the checkpoint through the vibrating air. He dismounted as we approached and pushed the bike along beside him. An iron bar was propped on two oil drums across the road, and a red-tanked motorbike leant next to it on its stand. A group of men sat in the dark shade of a compound. One of them stood and walked towards us. He beckoned Faridun over with the hand that wasn’t holding the weapon.

‘Peace be upon you, young man. How are you?’ he said.

Faridun shielded his eyes and looked up at him. ‘Peace be upon you. I am fine, praise to God.’

The man was a black silhouette against the sun.

‘I am on my way home from Howshal Nalay, I have been to the market,’ Faridun said quietly. ‘I need to get back before dark.’

The others emerged from the shade and gathered behind the man. Faridun glanced up at them and recognised his friend Latif. Latif had also recognised Faridun; he looked uncertain and then walked forward and whispered into the man’s ear.

The man’s face tightened. He stepped out and kicked hard against the bicycle’s crossbar. Faridun caught his ankle under the sprocket and fell into the dust. I slumped onto the road with him, twisting under the orange twine. The man held the gun with both hands now and stepped onto the bike, crushing Faridun’s leg.

Faridun didn’t make a sound.

The man was over him and forced the barrel down against his mouth. Faridun pursed his lips closed, shaking his head from side to side. But the man wormed the weapon back and forth until Faridun’s lips were pushed apart and the barrel slid against his teeth, slipping up to peel away the gum from his incisor. Faridun opened his mouth in pain and the weapon banged through his teeth until it knocked into the back of his throat.

‘Is your father Kushan Hhan?’

Faridun gagged and his tongue curled up against the metal. He nodded in shock. The man pushed down harder and Faridun convulsed and choked around the barrel again.

‘Your father is working for the infidel,’ the man said. ‘If he continues to do this against the will of God, I will cut off your sister’s head. Do you understand?’ He pushed again a final time. And then the weapon was pulled clear and he stepped away.

Faridun’s eyes were wet but he held the man’s gaze as he got up out of his shadow and lifted the bike off the ground. The twine lost its grip and I fell off the pannier. Faridun’s lip was already thickening and he looked over at Latif.

‘May God be with you, Latif,’ he said, before slowly wheeling the bicycle down the road, away from where I remained in the dust.

The men laughed and patted Latif on the back. One of them walked into the middle of the road, picked me up and threw me down against the compound wall.

That afternoon the men reclined in the shade and waved a group of nomads and their camels through. They took fifteen dollars in tax from a lorry driver and chatted with a group of men on their way home from the fields. Finally, as dusk sharpened the horizon, two of them left on the motorbike. The others moved the pole and oil drums into the compound, said they would meet again after prayers and drifted away.

The last man lifted me onto his shoulder. He walked down a path beside a silver strip of water until we reached a dark area of undergrowth in a maze of crumbling walls. He opened a wooden door, put me on the floor and pulled it shut behind him.

I am a bag of fertiliser. I contain NH 4NO 3and I waited in that dark room until I was opened and used.

I was taken from a box and laces were threaded through my eyes. My tongue was pulled out and a man wrote BA5799 in black permanent marker that bled into my fabric.

I was in a room with things laid out on the floor, stacks of clothes in rows: T-shirts, combat shirts, trousers, hot-weather underwear and socks rolled in balls. There was a pile of notes and maps, a book about a distant country where conflict persisted; another pile with tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes, insect repellent and malaria tablets; a third with a GPS, a torch and a med-kit. There was also a leather diary, a helmet and a stack of magazines, oiled and shining, with a rifle-cleaning kit rolled up next to it.